Study Skills

Test time can be a period of great anxiety for many students. In the days leading up to the test, I would use class time to review and prepare the students for the upcoming test. I would give them a handout reminding them of time-management skills and general areas/topics that the test will cover. Also included would be brief reminders to look over old assignments (which they would have filed in the appropriate area of their binder) and to focus on areas that they missed with the help of their textbook and notes. Then, I would try to bring some fun into the test review.

This activity would be for teaching a unit about the Declaration of Independence. The unit would last for 3 days with reading out of the textbook about this time period. I would then set up “stations” around the room that would be hands-on centers to take the students back to 1776. Each station would have something different: one for food of the era, clothes, travel in colonial times, African-Americans in 1776, and even interactive websites that put you in the center of the time period. Each station would have a set of questions for the students to answer. This hands-on approach would give them a deeper understanding of the subject matter. Always at the front of the room, I would have a timeline of events leading to the War and the Declaration of Independence. As a finale to the activity, I would have the students form groups of no more than three, and give them a handout of the Declaration of Independence. I would ask each group to work together to re-write it in today’s language, and then discuss what each group came up with before giving them pre-made handouts of the activity material they had just studied.

I have always been a huge fan of the game show “Jeopardy”—even believing it to be required viewing for students. To help practice and review for the test, I would hold a “Jeopardy” contest the day before the test. I would split the class into three teams and have a series of answers...