Hands-on activities are the number one way that students remember information over an extended period of time. Listed below are some games that you can play with your students to help them remember current events that you are teaching. These games can be used jointly with the curriculum your are presently using to review key information about current events.
Guess Who I Am
Make a list of words or phrases that describe someone prominent in your curriculum. Either write the words on a whiteboard or say them aloud to your students one-by-one. The first student to guess who you are describing wins the game. Keep playing until you have covered all of the key characters in a particular unit.
Role Play
Have your students divide into groups of three or four. Give each group a particular topic that they have to act out (like charades) for the class. Bring in costumes and props that are laid out on a table that pertain to all of the topics that the students will act out. Have each group pick out those things that go along with their topic off the table to use in their mini-play. It will be interesting to see what they come up with, with no prior rehearsal!
You Be the Character
Kids love to see adults act silly and get down to their level. Why don't you dress up like someone while you are teaching a current event, and the students will have their eyes glued to what you are saying because of the way you are dressed. And, it gives them a good idea of what your main character may have actually looked like. (Example: Dress up as swimmer, if you are teaching about the Olympics and who won the Gold Medal in the long distance swim competition.)
Picture This
To review current event topics with your students, find pictures of faces and places that you taught about, blow them up, and bring them to class with you. Hold them up and have the students guess who the person or place is, and give one or two facts about the topic that relates to this person or place. You can even divide the class into two teams and the team that guesses correctly the most amount of times wins. Give out candy or sticker prizes to the winning team (or give them to everyone for all-around great participation).
Current Events Raffle
Hold a raffle in your classroom! Play a trivia game with your students. Have at least two questions for every child in your class (to give everyone some chance to win a ticket). Make up tickets that students receive every time they answer a question correctly. You will actually need two of every ticket. Give one ticket for a correct answer, and place its partner in a bowl for the drawing. At the end of the game, draw one of the tickets from your bowl and whoever has that ticket wins a prize. You can actually draw as many tickets as you want, if you want multiple kids to win prizes. This raffle can go on over a period of time, if you like, to cover multiple current event topics.
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