What is......A Great Template?

Like all teachers, I love incorporating games into my instruction. Games are such a great way to get all students participating, engaged, and motivated to learn.

My favorite way to use games in my classroom is to review before an upcoming test. It gives me an opportunity to conduct a quick informal assessment, while giving my students the time to preview the test content and study without being overcome with absolute boredom.

For my students, reteaching and reviewing information is essential to their ownership and retention of content. I always ensure the kids are given time in school to study and review before a test. But unfortunately, as an inclusion middle school teacher, I can fall victim to a last minute schedule change or moved test date I was unprepared for. Sometimes I need a simple, interactive, review game that can be flexible, regardless of what I am reviewing, that will not take me long to throw together, and that can be ready on the fly.

My fallback? 

What I love about Jeopardy is that all the kids by 6^th grade already know how to play, saving the time to review the game rules. I also like that I can assign the kids to work independently or break them into teams if they need more support. And no matter how many times they play Jeopardy, the kids still love it!

The problem that I was having, however, was that I was constantly creating my own Jeopardy game and materials, which was incredibly difficult when I was under a time crunch.

Until I received this PowerPoint Jeopardy Template from a fantastic teacher, and dear friend of mine, Ms. Murphy in Victor, NY.

What I love about this template is I can easily change and save the content on my computer to fit my review. And when the kids click on a question, the color will change so they know which questions are out of play. As an added bonus, the icon student in the corner raises her hand when the PowerPoint is up as a subtle reminder to not call out answers during the game. The only downfall is that like the real Jeopardy, the answers are not shown, so make sure you have them handy!

Click here to download this game to your own computer and quickly and easily change the content for your own review game!