I love taking games that I played as a child and finding ways to turn them into review games for the classroom. One of those games that is easy to turn into classroom review is the dot and box game. You remember it? You have a grid of dots and each person takes a turn placing a horizontal or vertical line between two adjacent dots. When one of the lines forms a completed square, that player gets to put their initial in the square. The player that has the most squares with their initials at the end, wins! With a few adjustments, this is a quick, inexpensive game you can bring into your classroom to bring life to your review sessions.
Why not try it out?
Dot Board Review
Objective: Answer questions and create squares on the dot board.
Topic: Any
Number of Students: 2 Individuals or 2 to 4 Teams
Materials Required:
- 40+ review questions
- Marker board and markers
Preparation:
- Draw 25 dots in a square on the marker board. 5 dots per line.
- Divide the class into teams.
How to Play:
- Determine which team will go first.
- Ask that team a review question, allow them 30 seconds to discuss, and then call for an answer.
- If answered correctly, they may go to the board and draw a horizontal or vertical line that connects two of the dots. Allow the team only 10 seconds to decide where to place the line.
- If the question was answered incorrectly, they may not draw a line.
- Play then moves to the next team.
- Ask that team a question, allow 30 seconds to discuss, and then call for an answer.
- If correct, that team may go to the board and draw a horizontal or vertical line that connects two of the dots.
- Play continues.
- When drawing the line on the board, if the line drawn makes a square, that team will write their team number in the square. They may then draw a bonus line (without answering a question). If the second line makes a square, they may write their number in that box. They may continue as long as each line drawn makes a square. Once the line they draw does not make another square, play moves on to the next team.
- Play continues until no more lines can be drawn on the board.
- The team with the most number of squares, wins.