You have come to the end of a chapter or unit, and now it is time to prepare your students for the test. It can be tough to engage students with traditional study guides, and middle schoolers present additional challenges. If we are being honest, watching students struggle to review their notes and complete their guide isn’t much fun for us teachers either.

Looking for ways to liven up your reviews? With more and more classrooms having access to technology, teachers can create fun and engaging review games to help students prepare for upcoming assessments. Here are some games to help reinforce skills in a fun and educational way that are guaranteed to have your students looking forward to the next test.

???? Quizizz

Quizizz is a free fun multiplayer classroom review tool that allows students to practice and learn together. It’s easy to create quizzes and fun to use with avatars, leaderboards, themes, music and memes to keep your students engaged. There are many educators who created public quizizz that are either skills or standards-based. Teachers can access detailed class and student-level data at the end of each quiz, which provides insight into the entire class.

???? Kahoot

Kahoot is a game-based classroom response system played by the whole class in real time. Multiple choice questions are projected on the screen. Students answer the questions with their smartphone, tablet or computer.

???? Stinky Feet

The rules are simple. Students are to answer questions in teams using the “numbered heads together cooperative learning strategy.” Any and all teams whose answers are correct get to choose a sticky note from the Stinky Feet poster. Each sticky note has a point value on it, some positive points and some negative.

⛄ Snowball Fight

For this game, everyone writes one review sentence or question on a piece of paper. Students stand in a circle around the room. Everyone balls up their paper into a ball and throws it into the middle of the circle. Each student picks up someone else’s snowball and reads the sentence aloud or answers the question.

???? Around the World

The goal is for a student to go all the way around the room and get back to their own seat first. The player who does so wins the game. Begin at the front of the classroom at the first seat in a row. The student from that seat stands next to the next seated student. Show both students a card with a review question. The first student to say the correct answer gets to move to the next seated student. The student who loses sits down. If a student answers five consecutive questions, they sit down and play begins with two new challenges.

Preparing for tests can be stressful for students and teachers. Whether you are using technology or not, spice up your reviews in order to make test prep a bit more enjoyable for everyone!

Are you looking for more ways to engage your middle school students? Visit bit.ly/platformreadtolead to learn more about our research-based learning approach which combines innovative learning games, data-driven tools, and educator resources to personalize learning for all youth in grades 5-9.