Card

Strike Out!

Working in groups, students generate key ideas or themes from a unit of study that can serve as a guide for further study or review.

Strike Out!

Summary

Students review key content via small and large group discussions resulting in a a master list of major ideas from the unit generated by the entire class. The master list can also serve as a pre-writing tool or organizer.

Procedure

Students work in small groups to write down as many key or main ideas from a unit of instruction they can remember without using notes or texts.
Groups pass their list to the next group and that group strikes the least important item from the list.
Groups repeat step two until the lists return to their original groups or until the teacher stops the activity.
If they would like, the original group now may reclaim one item that has been struck out. They may also edit their lists by grouping items into larger concepts if they wish.
Groups share the items that remain on their lists with the rest of the class. These answers are written on a master class list and should represent the facts that the class decided are the most important for the topic.
Have students evaluate their decisions in constructing the list–whether or not each item would be relevant to a test, whether something important is missing, etc.