None of these review ideas are my original design. I alternate between a few of them year to year and replay whatever games the students seem to enjoy the most. I enjoy board games and social deduction games, so when I can, I apply those game mechanics to AP World review.
You can also check out an earlier post that included five other review ideas that I often use through the year.
Hexagonal Thinking Maps
I wish I came up with the Hexagonal Thinking Maps idea. It is more complex than the vocabulary quilt and forces students to justify their connections. The “original” idea might be from Pam Hook of HookED. However, creating a template of hexagons with key terms is not a complicated activity to prep.
Essentially, students are encouraged to place hexagons next to each other if they can justify a connection. This connection could be a comparison, a cause/effect relationship, or anything else. The more adjacent hexagons, the more justification students have to provide. If there are missing spaces in their maps, students can be encouraged to think of terms or concept that provide the missing pieces. This can easily be done in groups or individually. Likewise, teachers can do creative things with the explanations or justifications depending on students and the available time.
Check out this blog post by Cult of Pedagogy that goes into far greater detail about using hexagonal thinking.
Here is another blog from a teacher in Wisconsin who used them. I love the idea of color coding the hexagons as well. Great ideas to make the activity more complex and enriching.
Here is template of hexagons that can be used to create a set of terms. Easy and great review with just a bit of prep. Make sure you ask your students to do the cutting the first time you use a set!
6 Degrees of AP World
The game is simple, students have two key terms and have to connect them in six or fewer steps. There are many variations of this review activity and many ways to spice it up with creativity. I like to have student pairs select key terms randomly and then work together to justify their connections. Doing it simply this way means every pair can make different connections. Students often enjoy a quick gallery walk of how other students completed their connections.
For a bit of competition, pairs can be asked to complete the activity for the same set of key terms. If a pair cannot complete it in 6 steps or fewer they get eliminated. After a few rounds a winner emerges. Likewise, you can create a simple points system for how many connections it takes to complete the game over multiple rounds. Word of advice, don’t let the competition overshadow the value of thinking about and explaining connections. This can be a quick review activity, or something that students put a bit more time into. The image below is one of my quick versions.
You can this set of key terms from the AP World CED to facilitate the game.
Monikers or Fishbowl
Monikers is a mix of Taboo and Charades. To play the game you need two teams of students. Teams of 5-6 seem to work best. With larger classes you can run multiple games simultaneously or simply have larger teams.
Place a set of 30 or so key term cards in a bowl. These terms are the “set” for the entire game. I like to choose these myself before the game and only tell students what unit(s) they are from.
The game is played over 3 rounds. In each round a person from the starting team has 60 seconds to get their team to guess as many terms as possible from the set. There are no limits to the number of guesses and skipping is allowed. The team keeps whatever terms are guessed correctly. Whatever terms are left go to a player of the second team, who repeats the hint-giving/guessing process for another 60 seconds. Teams alternate until all key terms in the round have been claimed correctly by a team. Then, points for the round are tallied (based on correctly guessed terms) and all the terms are returned to the bowl for the next round. This process repeats for three rounds. However, each round has a unique rule.
Round 1: The speaker can say anything to describe the term except the term itself or any part of the term. They also cannot do things like “it has 8 letters,” “starts with a p,” or “rhymes with…”
Round 2: The speaker can only give a single word as a hint to their team.
Round 3: No speaking or sounds. The hint-giver can only act out the term.
By reusing the same set of terms for each round students review them in different ways. The game also rewards memory of what terms were in the deck. Inevitably, students will find some non-academic ways to guess the terms, but it makes for a really fun review game.
If those directions were a bit confusing, check out the official Monikers rules. I use the same deck of AP World key terms for this game as I do for the other vocabulary games. You can also have students select their own words for the game.
Codenames: AP World
If you have played the boardgame Codenames then you can probably see where I am going and can stop reading. This is a team game about making connections between key terms. I play it using the same deck of AP World key terms linked previously.
I have a copy of the Codenames boardgame which I use in class along with printed cards of key terms. If you don’t have one, the essential pieces can be easily and quickly reproduced. Check out the Codenames rules for more details about to to play in class. All you need are different word cards.
Pingback: 5 Review Ideas for AP World History