Transcript

Another activity that I use in my classroom is the game of Jeopardy. Everyone loves Jeopardy. The way we use it here is I use it as a pre-test. That way when I introduce a skill I can find out what they already know about the skill just by some leading questions. We start with categories, for instance here I tied it into social studies. And our categories are presidents, Mississippi, states, and natural resources. Now this is an after extension activity, we have already covered all of these subjects in social studies. 

So what I wanted to do is rather than before the test give them paper and pencil to memorize or put things on note cards which is something that we usually do, I opened it up as a game. And so what I did was I put the students in groups and they actually played against each other instead of just four individuals they actually play against each other. 

For example, a student would say "states for 100" and I would lift this up and under here would be the question, "famous for oranges". And they would respond, "what is the state of Florida", and they would receive that 100 points. I don't actually use a timer, my students actually use the Jeopardy theme. So as they're running out of time the whole class would just start and they would go "dun-nuh-nuh-nuhh-nuh-nuh-nuhh, duh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh". And most of the time that brings out the competitive spirit. So we actually enjoy Jeopardy, we've used it for math, we've used it for reading, we've used it for science. They absolutely love the solar system with Jeopardy. And here I've tied it into social studies, I thought it was a great way to integrate literacy with social studies.