Reviewing with Flashcards

One of the most frustrating things about teaching history, is getting your students to remember the facts.

There is a contingency of people who think that simply teaching concepts and ‘big picture’ ideas will result in students who can think critically about any situation that may present itself. As a history teacher, I am of the mindset that without the facts and the story to connect to, students will never know that a particular event is supposed to be an example of that particular big idea or concept.

Facts are important. They are what creates the story and allows students to compare and contrast events from different time periods. And sometimes the only way to get kids to remember facts, is by drilling them with flashcards.

At Engaging Stations, we offer two different types of flashcard decks. Memory Sparks are your basic question on one side – answer on the other flashcard decks. Most of our decks range from 32 to 39 cards. Looping Cards are a way to bring the review to a larger group of students and still keep them engaged in the material being reviewed.  Now for some execution ideas.

Play a game with the flashcards!

Tic Tac Toe – Pair students up, give them a deck of cards and a tic tac toe board. Have the students divide the cards into two piles. The students then begin to ask each other the questions. Every time one student gets an answer correct, they get to take a turn in tic tac toe. Have them keep track of the cards they miss so they can review those answers again. When they have finished their stack, they switch and start on the other stack. Give a prize to the student who wins the most tic tac toe games.

Flashcard Challenge – Pair the students or put them in triads. In the center of the desk, place a token of some value. (homework pass, candy, school incentive buck, etc.) Have the students divide the cards as equally as possible. The students will quiz the person to their right. Whoever is asking the questions will continue to ask until the other student misses one. At that point, the student will write down how many questions they got right in a row. Play passes to the next student. After a given amount of time, the student who answered the most questions correctly in a row, receives the token from the center of the desk.

Looping Cards – Looping cards are meant to be distributed amongst a larger group of students. No student should have more than four cards at one time. The play starts with one student reading the “who has” portion of one of their cards. That question or statement is answered by the “I have” on another student’s card. That student then stands, and reads their “I have”, then continues by reading the “who has” from that same card. Play will loop through the group until it ends with the student who originally started the game. Time the students and when the play is over, have them shuffle and redistribute the cards, and play again – seeing if they can beat their original time. Have different groups or class periods compete against each other for the best time.

Do you have another great way to use flashcards to review material? Post it as a comment and share with your fellow educators!!

 

Happy New Year! Welcome to Testing Season!

Hey there fellow educators!

Here’s hoping that you had a restful break and are ready to hit the ground running. The notorious testing season is upon us all. For those of you who had the privilege of attending the NCSS annual conference in December, I hope you were able to bring home some great new ideas and strategies to implement in your classrooms.

We led a great session at NCSS, dealing with stations. How to use them in the classroom and troubleshooting ideas for creating them yourself. People walked away with a new-found understanding of how this process works on the middle and high school level. For those of you who were not able to attend, below you will find some of the pointers discussed at the session. These are meant to help you avoid different pitfalls and mistakes that come with trying to create stations yourself. Of course ultimately, we would love to just create them for you. That is the great thing about what we do at Engaging Stations… we take the time and work out of the process, and give you the resources to do what you do best, TEACH!

Additionally, please know that we welcome any and all ideas. If you have a great idea for a station but aren’t sure how exactly to make it work, email us! If we use your idea, we’ll send you your station – made with our high quality materials – for free! We hope to hear from you soon! Email ideas to: perfectlyfrankpapers@gmail.com.

In the meantime, check out what we have to offer and tell your friends and colleagues!

5 Tips for Station Creation

1. Choose your topics wisely. Complicated topics are not suitable for stations use unless they can be broken into sections and made into separate stations.
2. Choose your activities wisely. Make sure the activity does not detract from the content. Also, try to pick an activity that can be completed in a short amount of time.
3. Carefully think through the process that you want students to complete as they work through the station. Always simplify. If there are too many things to do, they will either run out of time or be confused as to what to do when.
4. Always plan to have a way to check for understanding. You can have a “teacher station” where the students rotate to you and you check their answers on their handouts and ask extension questions to monitor for understanding. This is essential. Just as stations can solidify correct learning they can also result in confusion if the teacher is not actively involved in the process.
5. Use your professional learning community to help you. If you want to make stations for a unit review, delegate the creation responsibilities. Each teacher on the team can produce one set of the station they create for each team member. In the end you only create one but benefit from the use of many!