END-OF-THE-YEAR REVISION GAME

All good things must come to an end... and this school year is no different! That is why I usually tend to finish my last class of the year on a happy note. If that does not get my students into the right mood to enroll in our school again, I have no idea what will!

Since this year I am into #RetrievalPractice and boosting long-term learning, I decided to put a new class game into practice: a Retrieval Bingo Game. Also, I added an unexpected twist by using wheeldecide.com, which spiced up the atmosphere. I must say it worked out quite well in the end! Here is how we played:

Go to wheeldecide.com and create a wheel with the titles of all the units you have covered in the year. Just in case you need an example, this is what the roulette looked like for my C1.1 "Blended" students.  

When in class, give each student a bingo card like the one below (click here for a sample model in Spanish that you can customize to your own needs!) and explain that, as in any bingo game, the final aim of the game is to complete their card so that they shout bingo! as loud as they can. 

First, students should be asked to fill in the questions themselves before they start playing. To do just that, ask them to spin the wheel one at a time to write one question for every single unit in the year. Students complete their cards individually as units pop up on the screen. They can write true-false questions, multiple-choice questions, open-ended questions... on anything in the units: vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation... you name it! Here is one example: I know little about mediation. Re-write the sentence using inversion. Promise your students will come up with much better questions! Let them know that creativity is power and, when it comes to learning a language, it also means progress!

Once they have completed their questions, it is time for them to mingle and play! As they ask each other their questions, tell them to write the name of the student who knows the answer and the correct answer itself. The game is much more effective if you tell students not to repeat names on their cards. That was hard, indeed!

At the end of the game, I awarded a certificate to the student with the highest number of correct answers and covered the questions that were left unanswered. It was a fun, furious and very compelling way to retrieve course content that students had almost forgotten! 

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!