When I was teaching my Special Education Classroom, I created several lesson review games that kept my children’s interest. I had an EMH or educable mentally handicapped class. These children were from 55 to 75 IQ range. These children responded well to either tactile or kinesthetic learning. Tactile is of course where you use your hands feeling and kinesthetic is movement. These games incorporate tactile and kinesthetic movement. They are simple, but worked to help the children learn the material I was covering.
1) The first game is called Last Man Standing. This works well as a review game for a quiz or test. All students simply stand at their desk. To be fair, I pick students to answer questions in order of their seating in the rows. So the first child on the left front is the first child to play, and so forth. If you get the question correct, you remain standing, if not, you sit down. If you miss the question, anyone from the class can guess. The Last Man Standing wins.
2) Move Ahead. This classroom game is played using the square tiles on the classroom floor. I taped off a starting line and a finish line. I divided students into two teams. We played the game two different ways. I would divide the teams, and pick one player from each team. I would ask the players two questions and the one who answered first by raising his or her hand got to move ahead a square. After two questions, the next two players would come up and take up squares where their team mate had left off. I also tried playing to having each team chose one player to represent them throughout the whole game.
3) Twister Review. I bought an old fashioned game of twister. I would again divide the students into two teams. About the only way to play this game safely is to choose merely one representative from each team. Both students would start out on the side of the mat. I would ask a question. If you answered correctly, you could choose any square you wished. If you either didn’t answer or got the wrong answer, you had to spin and you landed on the circle the spinner picked. The winner was either the student who asked the most questions or the student who fell first. What made this game interesting is that the winner might have gotten most of the questions wrong, but was steadier on his feet.
4) Beat the Clock. This game requires either a student aide, another teacher, or a teacher’s aide to help. I would line the students up into two teams. They would space themselves about a hands length apart. I would be the leader of one team and the aide would be the leader of the other, standing in front of the line. I usually picked a square in front of me for the student to come to once I asked the question. If the student got the question right, he went back his desk. If he did not, he went to the back of his line. The winning team was the first team with no one left standing in line.
5) Silent Speed ball. This was another one of my favorite review games. I would have the students stand in a circle. They simply would quietly throw the ball to each other. If you missed the ball, you were still in the game. They would continue throwing until I caught someone off guard and yelled stop! That student would answer the review question. If they answered correctly, they remained in the game. If they got it wrong, they sat down in their seat.
I can hear some teachers saying these games would harm self confidence of the children who didn’t win. First of all, we live in a competitive society so they actually begged to play. Second of all, it gave them a break from lectures and class work and gave an outlet for the children who learned tactically or kinesthetically.
The only issue that might be encountered is the same students miss questions over and over. All the teacher does is merely act as if she is reading the game card or question and give these children the easiest question. A teacher who is a good actor can say something like “Why does Bob always get the easy question.” The students usually don’t’ catch on. Those that do realize what I’m doing and play along for the slower child’s sake.
Also, sometimes we played the games for fun, other times for points. The children were members of one of two teams. The student who won each game, won points for his team. Points were also chosen based on behavior of team members. Points were never taken away, just earned. AT the end of each nine weeks, we had a party. Everyone participated. Every child got pizza and candy. But the winning team got either an extra piece of pizza or candy. No one complained, even the losing team.
Try these games next time you have an active class or need a break. You will discover that these games allow room for all learning types, and you’ll also notice that your test scores improve.
Reference:
- Experience as a Special Education Teacher
