Terrific Test Review Strategy for English Language Learners!

 

Well, I put off ending The Civil War with my 5th graders as long as I could. I think we are supposed to be done with Reconstruction by now. Oops. I wish our curriculum was The Civil War-WWII, but alas it’s not. When was the last time you read the word “alas” in a blog post? Boom. Maybe I should add in shan’t somewhere. You shan’t see me use shan’t in a blog post. Anywho, I’m off topic. Let’s get on to this really cool test review strategy!

Yep, I have 150+ more years to cover by May. Oh my! The students were still engaged and asking questions and I have about 2,001 more lesson ideas on the war. I also probably have 1,002 different Power-Points named The Civil War. Needless to say pretty hard to find the one I wanted in the heat of the teachable moment! However, the instructional calendar and the looming District Assessment hangs over us so we had to move on. I decided it was finally time to give an assessment and their grand finale Civil War project is due next Thursday.

The test was set for Thursday so I knew I had to come up with a review strategy that would get everyone involved. No time for a long Jeopardy game that day! I have a large population of English Language Learners and I’m in a Facebook group for teachers of ESOL/ESL. One of the other members, Tracy Willis from Wild Child Designs, teaches 3rd and 4th grade at a school for newcomers and has a really cool test review strategy. I know my students always do better when they can discuss things orally so this product was a perfect fit. And let’s face it, after being stuck inside due to rain all last week, I wanted to harness that chattiness into good instead of evil!

It’s called “Remember, Remind, Review.” She includes lots of suggestions for different ways to use it, too! The best part is that it would work for all content areas. Here is the link to it:
RRR link.

 

 

First, you start with “I Remember.” I gave the students 5-10 minutes to jot down any words or phrases at all they remembered about The Civil War.

Then, I had the kids share with an elbow partner at their table groups for the “Remind.” The phrases make a great sentence frame for all learners. They take turns saying what they remember and the other child writes it down in their “You Reminded Me” section. Well, what about if the kids wrote down the exact same things? Here was my suggestion, “Talk about other things you remember together and you include that because you reminded each other!”

This really helped to activate their prior knowledge before we went through a review PowerPoint together. It was a very-telling informal assessment for me as I walked around and saw who couldn’t think of anything they remembered! I did let my newcomers use their Interactive Notebook for help. I had them write down 2 or 3 things in the “We Reviewed” section as we went through that PowerPoint.

I really liked this activity because it allowed them to make connections between their ideas, practice academic language, and included everyone. The great thing was when we came to the day of the test. I included a section where they had to write 5 facts they learned about the war, not including any info covered on the test. Some of them were really struggling to come up with anything (insert angry teacher look here). So I thought back to this activity and I said, “Think back to what you wrote in the “I remember” section! You can include the same things here!!”

I love using out of the box strategies in Social Studies and this was way more interesting than a regular whole class lesson or review question and answer worksheet! I also did a collaborative timeline activity to review the Civil War. You can read about that here: Civil War Timelines