Classroom Management Magic - Making Review Fun

This time of year can be wonderful, magical and full of fun.  Children seem to ooze with excitement; walking into my son's Kindergarten classroom, the energy is honestly palpable!  Our younger, elementary friends are not the only ones who may seem to have a little trouble focusing on the necessary tasks at hand during the school day.  Between concerts, and snow days, and professional development days, and vacation days...not to mention the extras that go on outside of school this time of year in December, Middle School can quite easily become Crazy Town in the days nearing Holiday Break.  Though these are mostly the best of times - they can also be the most challenging of times, especially when we know that CCSS and benchmarks wait for no one...not even a distracted child.   This is when, much like Santa and his magic toy bag, if you have a few tricks to pull from your sleeve to harness the energy and keep the kiddies focused, everyone will be that much happier to prepare for things like... any assessments you may be giving in December. ;-)

My Winter Tic Tac Toe Review is one such activity that is an easy game to set up, and provides not only for a creative review, but a chance for you to gather some formative assessment data for your students as you check questions and answers and observe game play.  I'm always looking for quick review activities that require students to process and internalize new information. This version of Tic Tac Toe is perfect because students must first create their own open-ended questions and answers to those questions - which require details for support - before they can play. Students then work together, quizzing each other, as they move their way to a Tic Tac Toe.

This download includes:

Complete Directions

Game Board

18 Game Pieces (Students can cut these out.)

Question/Answer Planning Sheet

...AND a link to a FREEBIE on my blog that can help with easily creating cooperative learning partners that can be used for this activity or any other quick think-pair-share kind of brain break you like to practice in your class.  The key to keeping activities like this from taking too much time to make worth it is having a system already in place to quickly get students working together...you'll find that here.

You can download a preview of this at my TpT Store:

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and you can also find other activities to help with some fun review that will leave your students asking when they can play again...and not, "When does this class end?!"

Grammar: I have...Who has...?

Common ELA Vocabulary Review Game Pack

ALSO - I'm linking this post to:

Be sure to click and check out other great resources for this crazy time of year...all for $1.99 or less!

Any activities that you like to do this time of year that keep kiddos focused  while having fun?

Please think about sharing below.

Thanks for stopping by!