Rocket Review – Gamified Revision

Guest Author - Shane Hill

It’s been a full afternoon, there’s half an hour until the end of the day, your students have just worked their way through some heavy subject matter and everyone is tired. This is the perfect time for a Rocket Review!

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Rocket Review is an engaging and fun way to review and reinforce material with your class. It’s gamified revision!

For this activity your students need to work in teams of three to five. The smaller the group the better so all students get a chance to participate. The teams spread out around the edges of the room with a piece of string running from each team to you at the front and centre of the room.

Set Up – Each Team Needs:

• A length of heavy-duty string or chord

• A cardboard tube (like an old toilet roll if you are allowed to use those)

• A bulldog clip

• A 30 cm ruler or length of wood

To set up for Rocket Review start by attaching the string or chord to the ruler. By using heavy duty string the chord won’t break and the ruler is for students to roll the string around at the end of the activity to hopefully save knots. It also lets students raise the string up to 30cms above their heads to help them get the rocket to you as quickly as possible.

The cardboard tube is threaded onto the string and the bulldog clip is attached to the front to make the nose cone, weight the tube and allow students to attach their answers to their rocket. It is also good for securing the rolled up string, ruler and tube together at the end of the revision session.

How To Play:

When you ask a question, the team write/draw their answers on a piece of paper, attach it to their rocket with the bulldog clip and send the rocket down the string to you.

For each question, points are awarded to the first three teams to send in the correct answer. You can increase or decrease the number of teams you want to reward for being correct but multiple teams means that the game is competitive yet students have a greater chance of winning whatever positive reward you use in your classroom.

This game is simple yet so much fun you and your students will love it.

With each and every question being a race, anticipation is heightened and student focus is maximized. Answers can be words, images, diagrams, whatever suits the question. You can also ask multiple questions before the rockets are to be sent where all the answers must be correct to receive the points. Rocket Review is a great activity to make revision fun and get students physically active but they will also learn a bit of physics. In a game where speed is everything students quickly learn that using the ruler to raise the string as high as possible gets their rocket moving more quickly towards you. They might also discover that the more paper they attach to their bulldog clip the heavier the rocket and the quicker it moves as it gains momentum on the string. You might also like to let students decorate their rockets to make it easy for you to identify teams and increase their enjoyment of the game. Once you have collected your student’s responses and awarded points for correct answers you need to send the rockets back. To do this you can either ask a student from each team to retrieve their rocket or ask students to put their rulers on the ground and you lift all the strings as high as possible. This should allow you to return all the rockets in one go ready for another fast-paced round of Rocket Review.

Please let us know of any additional elements you add to this when you use it with your students by commenting below.