Exam Review Using LEARNING-FOCUSED Strategies
Debbie Willingham
Apr 26, 2010
I was recently at a high school on what they considered a "bad" day for me to be visiting classes. They were within a week of mid-term exams and most teachers were in the midst of helping students review important content that had been taught during the semester. While a good job had been done in planning and implementing LEARNING-FOCUSED lessons during the semester, what I saw in class after class on this day was the same kind of review I had endured myself in high school classes over thirty-five years ago. Students were given huge review packets with hundreds of questions and terms they should be able to define. Students' reactions were the expected sighs followed by grudgingly getting out their textbooks and occasionally their notebooks to start plowing through the list. There was no connection to the good strategies that were used in their lessons or to the Student Learning Map and Unit or Lesson Essential Questions that were supposed to be the focus of what students were learning. It was as though teaching and reviewing were two separate, unrelated items, and as a result students were re-teaching themselves as though everything they were looking at on the page was new content.
Reviews for exams need to correlate to the way students have been taught throughout the time period leading up to them. Part of the point of chunking content under Concepts and Essential Questions is to lead students back to the most important point(s) of the lesson and unit. The Concepts, Lesson Essential Questions, and Vocabulary should be the basis for the review. Using Student Learning Maps for the units studied during the semester should give students both a good review of what is important and a sense that they are revisiting important content, not starting from scratch. They should revisit graphic organizers completed earlier that explain content or processes in a succinct fashion. Research shows that for students to really internalize content, they should stay away from the initial source (usually the textbook) after the first time they use it to glean information; from that point on they should use the more succinct notes/condensation/summary they have created from the primary source.
One teacher developed an excellent exam review by giving students a list of what to pull from their notebooks to study: the Student Learning Maps for each unit with Essential Questions answered on the back (categorized by Concepts); a vocabulary chart; a cause and effect organizer completed as notes; and a matrix with important formulas and applications. Students were able to pair up to locate their work and get it in order, then go through it together before a whole class review game.
After giving students a sense of what they need to review, games are a great way to go through the important details of a topic. For example, if you are using a Jeopardy type of game to review for the exam, instead of each "category" you could put the Unit Essential Questions as the category area for mid-terms or large exams and Concepts in the category area for unit exams. In a semester it is feasible that in any given course there might have been 3-6 units, which means 3-6 unit essential questions or "categories" for the game. If you have used a monthly/unit structured review process this will automatically be in place as you work through the semester (see Structured Review in the Learning-Focused Strategies: Planning Units for Learning book).
Students can also make great use of word walls in reviewing. Instead of giving students another list of the same words on the review sheet, the teacher should give them a list of examples or applications of the term, and then have them complete this sentence (adapted as needed):
This is an example of (the term) because _________________________________.
In addition to the content of the review itself, remember that the format of your review lesson is in actuality the same as in any well-planned lesson. You may have several Essential Questions or Concepts as the focus rather than one, but you should pull the point of the review together with an Activating Strategy that will remind students how the Essential Questions or Concepts fit together to form a bigger picture, or have students look at the questions and with a partner come up with a general statement about what they learned from each unit, or have them brainstorm a list of ten important terms they learned concerning each of the units, etc. The Teaching Strategies portion of the lesson may be having students pull together and review the maps, organizers, and other important reminders they will need to go over, and the Summarizing Strategy may be to come up with a couple of good questions they would suggest for the exam or to make a list of the three hardest things they have to remember.
Students need to see continuity and consistency in how they are taught, and they appreciate the organization graphic organizers and learning maps give them. Continuing the use of Concepts, Essential Questions and other research-based strategies on a review day make this a great day for walkthroughs rather than a day you dread to see company coming.
