Envelope Review

This is an easy on-the-spot review activity for the time-strapped teacher who wants students to stay engaged in a review (when they may have had little time to put together a review game).

Set it up:

1. Take a test or study guide, preferably one sided. If it's two sided just cut up two copies of it and "x" out the side you don't want to use. Cut the test up into strips of 3-5 questions (dependent on your students' ability levels).

2. Put the strips in envelopes and tuck the top in.

3. Organize a station "route" for your classroom. I usually group my tables into threes for review (see my post on "how to group"). Then, depending on the number of envelopes I have, I either have one long snake of a review activity or two "tracks" doing the same activities. If you have short class periods, two tracks works best because you can lead whole-class station activities while still only finishing in one instructional period. See my post on "basics of stations".

Use it

1. Ask students to take out a piece of notebook paper and number the paper based on the number of questions you have.

2. Group them however you wish.

3. Explain the activity to a level of detail based on their needs.

4. Have them table up their desks and then move to their review stations.

5. Ask for a student volunteer and MODEL the station track, so students know where to go next (my 7th graders just love getting lost and then saying "where do we go? what's next?).

6. The best way to tell students to use this is to have one group member open the envelope, another read the question, and another try to answer it first. Then they should rotate jobs at the next station. This works on reading skills and listening skills, and also prevents one student from monopolizing the answering time so all students can be challenged.

7. Before students move to the next station, AGAIN, point out who goes where next.

8. Complete the circuit.

9. Lead a review session at the end to make sure students got the answers (or post on the board during a closure activity, so students can check answers at their own pace and move on to homework or anchor activities or something else!).

Credits: I am sure someone wrote this somewhere... but I came up with this activity on a day when the copier was broken. With only two printed off study guides, how could I meaningfully engage my students? This is what I came up with and the kids loved it.