The Row Game

The Row Game is a nice little review game that I use often in my classroom.  I like it because I get a chance to see a lot of students' work in a little amount of time.  It's a great form of formative assessment.  Okay, here's how it works....

• Teams sit in a row.
• Teams are not allowed to work together.
• I post a problem and every individual student works on the problem independently. 
• Once the students are finished I check their work.
• I start by checking the first person in the row.  If the first person is correct I give that row/team 5 points.  If the first person is not correct, then I check every single person behind him.  For every correct response, I award that row/team that many points.
• I check all rows in this manner.  
• For the rows/teams that have one less student, I count the second person as 2 points rather than 1.
• The first person moves to the back of the row, everyone else moves up a seat, and we do it all over again.

This game gives me a chance to see where the class is as a whole.  If everyone in the first seat gets a problem correct, chances are the majority of the class is ready to move on.  If I see that all the teams are getting a low score on a problem then I know that is something I need to spend more time on.

I have also used this game to introduce topics.  I will start with something they will have prior knowledge of and build from there.  For example: In my Algebra 1 course we have previously covered Simplifying Radicals and the Pythagorean Theorem with Rational Solutions.  I began the row game with those two topics.  Once I felt the students remembered how to do these problems, I gave them a right triangle to solve where the solution was a radical that needed to be simplified.  

Try this game out....let me know how it worked in your classroom.