Preparing for State Testing

We just finished our state testing on Friday of last week.  What do you do to prepare for state testing?  I use the typical Jeopardy and Are you Smarter than a fifth graders, but here are some other items that I've created, bought, and thought of over the years...

I made my own Government BINGO cards.  Each card is completely different and the students are mainly reviewing important documents we discussed, amendments, and the amendment process.

On the other side of the same card is an overview of SS for the ENTIRE year!  This is always fun to see kids trying to recall these important events that we've not talked about since the beginning of the school year.

I downloaded these Where Am I Cards and students had fun trying to guess where I was.  Next time, I think I will ask them to point it out on the MAP!!  Here is the link to get these for FREE!!

I started doing these when I taught third grade and I love them, plus the students do too!  Basically, you fold the paper at the bottom up about 2 inches.  You then write three clues about a person and have students guess the Who Am I?  I actually let my students draw names out of bag to get their assigned person.  They then read them to the class and have their classmates guess!  You could do this with Where am I? or even What am I? and do vocabulary words!

Here is the answer, which is written under the 2 inch flap.

In Science, I had created games already for each unit, so we pulled those games out and revisited them.  So what about you, what do you do to make reviewing fun and meaningful?

Four Corners

Happy Saturday, y'all!

My goal today is to get this house nice and clean, but I'm here bloggin' instead! Please don't tell my hubby! ;)

I wanted to share with you all today a FUN game that my students enjoyed playing this year!  It is based on the rainy day recess game, "4 Corners."  One day during a regular play of this game, I thought- DUH!!!  **And that is how this game was created!

What you do is label each corner, A, B, C, and D.

You ask the students a question and then they move to the corner that they believe is the right answer.  The easiest way to do this, so you don't have to repeat yourself 100 times, is to create a slide show and project it on your Promethean Board (or whatever "smart" board you have), so that students can read them, too.

After a few minutes you make sure that ALL the students are in a corner and then you can use this time to discuss the incorrect answers.  Students that are in those corners will have a seat.  The students that were in the correct corner get to answer another question!!

Rules:
No running
No pushing
No moving to a different corner once I call "time."

Pros:
Interactive review game!!!
Use your state standardized testing questions (GA takes the CRCT, so I would create questions that are similar to those that could be found on a test, or used old ones found from the web)
Students have fun!  On rainy days my students ALWAYS wanted to play this 4 corners instead of the regular way.

Cons:
In each class the students have decided that one kid is "the smart kid" and they started following them around!  To stop this, I threw in trick questions.  I also would say, "Are y'all sure about that" and create the look of confusion on their faces!

Adaptations:
I changed up our 4 corners game in several different ways this year...
When we were studying the classification system (kingdom, phylum, class, order, genus, and species) I found two other open spots to create "6" corners.
When we were studying different historical figures, I would label each "4" corner with a name of a person we were learning about.  I would read different facts about a person and they would have to find the correct person!
Our all time favorite was for CRCT studying and I posted four different wars that we discussed in Social Studies.  I would read facts about the weapons, the reasons for the war, the places it was fought, etc.

How do you think you could use this game in your classroom?
*Can't wait to see those answers in the comments below!!