When preparing my World History students for their unit exam on Byzantine and Islamic Empires, I had conducted a quick survey asking students what was their favorite / most productive way to review for a test. The vast majority of these students had said "GAMES!" with much excitement. I did not want to do the standard, run of the mill Jeapordy! review game, so I decided to think of something fun and creative. I decided to go with the review game Onion Ball. Onion Ball is a series of test questions on half sheets of paper, in which will be crumbled up and layered on top of each other, creating a rather large paper ball. The "onion" portion of this comes from the way in which you conduct the game, by peeling off a layer and answering a review question. The reason this falls under the domain 2d: Managing Student Behavior, is because I used this as a positive reinforcement with my World History students. They were having some difficulties demonstrating proper behavior in the class, and I had to go back over the classroom rules and procedures, and I reminded them that if they could not act correctly, that it would be a miserable experience for both myself and the students. I had got the students excited by letting them know that we could play this review game, which none of the students had ever played before, if and only if their behavior improved. Over the next few days, especially the days leading up to the exam, student behavior had improved drastically.
Author:
Garrett Miller
Last modified:
11/24/2015 5:37 PM (EDT)