Test Prep Review Stations With Quizzes

The day before a unit test, the usual review is a worksheet everyone does silently at their desk. It tells you little, because the students who needed the review most are the ones who stare at it. Review stations give you the same time but split into short, varied activities, so students keep moving and you can sit with the group that needs you.

This post shows how to build stations around quizzes: what each station does, how long the rotations take, and how to manage the devices. It assumes a 45 to 55 minute class.

Plan the stations around what the test asks of students

Start from the test, not from the tools. List the three or four skills it checks, such as recalling vocabulary, applying a procedure, explaining a reason, or reading a diagram. Each station should rehearse a different one. If every station is "answer questions on a screen", the day feels like a long quiz, and the test will probably be no more engaging.

A sensible set for four stations looks like this:

1. Quiz practice. Students play a short quiz solo on a device, at their own pace.
2. Teacher table. A small group works through the questions they got wrong on a recent quiz or exit ticket.
3. Explain it. Pairs take turns explaining one concept from the unit without notes, then swap.
4. Make a question. Students write two multiple choice questions with a convincing wrong answer, which forces them to think about misconceptions.

You can drop or swap any of these. The point is that the quiz is one stop of several.

The quiz station

On library quizzes, solo play needs no account, so students can open the quiz from a link and start right away. A class set of phones or Chromebooks is not required: a station can run with two or three shared devices, with students taking turns on a few questions each, or working as a pair.

Choose a quiz that matches the unit. For a fractions test, Fractions and Decimals is a good fit. A physical science unit could use Forces and Motion. For an English test on parts of speech, there is Grammar, Parts of Speech and Punctuation. Play the quiz first yourself, and note any question that falls outside what you taught. Tell students to skip it, rather than let them waste their minutes.

Put the link on a card at the station, not on the board, because the board will be hidden or crowded. Write on the card how many questions to finish by the time the rotation ends, so students know the target. If you want the fast students to stay useful, ask them to play the quiz and then jot down which question they found trickiest and why.

If you have made your own quiz, solo play of your own quizzes is a paid feature, so for a free account a good alternative is to run it as homework the night before. With homework, students open a code or link and play on their own device, and you see each nickname's score. That tells you which stations to staff more carefully the next day.

Timing the rotations

With four stations, 8 to 10 minutes each leaves a couple of minutes for moving. A rough schedule for a 50 minute class:

• 3 minutes: explain the stations and groups.
• 4 rounds of 9 minutes: 36 minutes.
• 4 minutes of moving between stations.
• 5 minutes: whole-class wrap up, with one question you picked from what you heard.

Use a visible timer and a sound that is not unpleasant. A countdown on the board that students can see reduces how often you have to say "one more minute". If a group is truly stuck in a conversation, let them finish the thought. A rotation that ends mid-explanation is usually the best sign that the station is working.

What does not work: more than five stations for a single class period, because the moving time eats the lesson, and groups of more than five, because someone ends up watching. If you have a large class, run two copies of the most popular station rather than add a new one.

Managing devices without chaos

Devices are the part most teachers worry about. A few simple rules go a long way.

• Assign one device per pair, not one per student, and label devices with the station name so they come back to the right place.
• Put the quiz link on a printed card and keep the card with the device.
• Tell students what to do if the device freezes: raise a hand, switch to the "explain it" task, and wait.
• Keep a paper backup. A page of the same questions printed from your own quiz means a dead wifi connection does not end the lesson.

Be honest with yourself about what the quiz station can tell you. Solo play gives the student feedback, but it does not report back to you. For that, you need either a live game, which gives you a leaderboard and, with Pro, a per-question report, or homework, which shows you scores per nickname. Stations are for practice, not measurement. Save the measuring for the test.

Use a live game to close the lesson

A good ending to a stations day is a five-minute live game on the same unit. Everyone joins from the code, you play six to eight questions, and you stop on the ones where the room splits. That is often a better use of the last minutes than a recap, because you get a real picture of what students still find hard, and you can plan the morning of the test around it. If you have not run one before, how to run a live quiz game in class walks through it.

You can also point students to a shared flashcard set for the night before. Flashcards suit pure recall such as vocabulary and formulas, and quizzes suit applying ideas, so use each for what it does well. Our comparison of flashcards and quizzes explains where the line falls.

When the stations are not the right choice

If the test is mostly about long written explanations, quiz-style stations will under-prepare students, since multiple choice does not rehearse writing. In that case, make the "explain it" station longer and add a station where students outline a written answer. And if your class struggles with moving independently, start with two stations and add more once the routine is solid.

Building your own station content

Library quizzes cover a lot of common topics, but your test is yours, and the best station quizzes match your wording and examples. Writing questions by hand is available with a free teacher account. A Pro account can generate a first draft of a quiz from your slides, a PDF, or a link, which you then edit. That takes a lot of the prep out of a review week. The pricing page lists what each plan includes, and the free library is a good place to start this week.