My BEST Science Activity Title: Jeopardy! Teacher: Leigh Daley Grade Level: Any Objective: Review or Preview of any skill in any subject Time: This can take anywhere from 20 minutes to 45 minutes

Describe the activity below.

Materials: Jeopardy game board.

21 question cards

To make your Jeopardy game board, you need a piece of poster board of any color and 21 library book pockets. Label the top of your poster board “Jeopardy!!” Make three rows of pockets underneath the title. Glue them down. Label the first row of pockets $10. Label the second row of pockets $20 and the third row $30. Laminate your poster and use a razor to slice open the lamination along each pocket. Your board is ready.

• Create 21 questions of varying difficulty.

• You need seven $10 questions (such as simple recall questions like vocabulary)
• seven $20 questions (such as comprehension questions over written material in the textbook)
• seven $30 (critical thinking questions to apply information).

You can use index cards if you want to save the cards for future use. You can also use slips of paper. It doesn’t really matter.

The questions you use may be preview questions to find out what your students already know about a certain subject.

Your questions could be from a chapter or lesson review or test.

There are great places on line that can give you great questions. www.quia.com is a great place to search by subject.

http://mswww.grand-blanc.k12.mi.us/brandt/ is a classroom teacher’s website where he has created several online Jeopardy games that he calls Sciencegy games. He has them listed by subject under his Fun stuff page link.

Place your questions in the pockets and you are ready to go!

There are several variations on the game:

1. Divide your class into 2 or more groups. Call them up by turn and have them pull a card. They read the question and try to earn their team the number of dollars by answering correctly. Talley the dollars on the board. This option is one of my least favorite because only one child is actively involved at a time.
2. Another option is to have all students keep track of their answers on a sheet of notebook paper that will be turned in at the end of the game. This makes them all accountable for paying attention during the course of the game.
3. My favorite option is to pass out lapboards to all of the students. When the one student is at the board, he reads his question, but does not give his verbal answer until everyone at their seats has written their answer on their lapboard and covered their answer. When the student at the board gives his answer, you have several options.

1. If he gets it right, his team gets his points. Then his teammates show their boards and you can award the team extra points for each correct answer.
2. If he gets it wrong, you can turn the question over to the next team. Who ever is supposed to go next shows his board. If he is correct, he gets the points and can add any correct answers from his team.
3. Or, if he gets it wrong you could, instead of turning it over to the other team, check his teammate’s answers and give them the points for their correct answers. By awarding extra points for the rest of the team’s correct answers, you avoid contention on the team for one of the players “blowing” their shot of winning.

Another thing that I like to do is have my questions on a transparency so I can show the current question to the entire class. It is a great way to focus their attention. It is also very handy if you use multiple choice questions. The students need to be able to see their answer choices instead of just hearing them.

I’ve used this to:

• prepare for fieldtrips – they can know what to look for on the trip (many places have pre-fieldtrip guides if you ask)
• review for Science and Social Studies tests (put similar questions that’ll be on the test)
• review and retell reading stories (story elements, comprehension questions)
• go over English skills (eg. Sentence types, correct sentences, parts of speech)
• go over Math skills (simple computation or word problems to more complex)
• Spelling (simple to more difficult)

I also believe in rewarding each student at the conclusion of the game. A piece of bubblegum or small piece of candy and they are thrilled!