10 Low-Prep Classroom Review Games Students Love

Review day has a reputation problem. Students hear “let’s review” and switch off, even though it’s the lesson that tells you what actually stuck before the test.

The fix I keep coming back to is turning review into a game. These 10 classroom review games take little or no prep, and most of them work with nothing more than a list of questions. Where a game runs well in PowerPoint, I’ll show you how I do it with ClassPoint, the add-in I use to run quizzes and give out stars from my slides.

Why Classroom Review Games Work

Classroom review games work because they make students pull answers out of memory instead of rereading notes. That kind of low-stakes recall is called retrieval practice, and it’s one of the best-tested study strategies we have.

In a 2006 Psychological Science study by Roediger and Karpicke, students who practised recalling a passage remembered 56% of it a week later, while students who simply restudied it remembered 42%. A good review game gives you that same recall practice, and it shows you the gaps while there’s still time to reteach.

Classroom Review Games at a Glance

1. Around the World

Around the World is a classic I’ve seen work again and again. All you need is a list of questions, and students can stay in their seats to begin with.

Best for: quick recall of facts, whole class, short time slots.

How to play:

• Two students stand up and pair off against each other.
• You ask a question, and whoever answers correctly first wins.
• The winner moves on to the next desk to face the next student.
• The student who lost sits down in the desk where they are, even if it’s not theirs. The goal is to move through as many seats as possible before losing.
• The game ends when one student makes it “around the world” back to their own seat, or when time runs out. Whoever traveled the farthest wins.

What you need: just questions.

Run it in PowerPoint: put one question on each slide so the whole class can read along, and keep a countdown running with ClassPoint’s timer to keep the pace up.

2. Multiple Choice Quiz Game

A multiple choice quiz game is the easiest way to hear from every student at once, not just the fastest hand in the room. Turn your existing questions into a quiz and let students answer from their devices.

Best for: whole class review, checking who’s got it before a test.

How to play:

• In PowerPoint with ClassPoint: this is my go-to. Write one question per slide, add a Multiple Choice button, and students join from their devices with a class code. Reveal the answer, award stars for correct responses, and show the leaderboard after each round.
• On a quiz website: Kahoot! and Wayground (formerly Quizizz) both have free plans for teachers. You build the quiz on their site, share a join code, and students play from their devices. Both also have libraries of ready-made quizzes if your topic is a common one.

What you need: ClassPoint, Kahoot! or Wayground.

Tip: on ClassPoint’s Pro plan, you can switch a Multiple Choice question into Quiz Mode. You set each question as 1, 2 or 3 stars, answers are marked automatically, and students get their stars without you clicking anything. Afterwards, you get a quiz summary and an Excel report showing every student’s answers, which makes a handy formative check.

Need question ideas? Here are 185 classroom multiple choice quiz questions from A to Z.

3. Fill in the Blanks

A fill-in-the-blanks exercise turns into a game the moment you add points and a leaderboard. It’s a good fit for key terms, formulas and definitions students need to recall word for word.

Best for: key vocabulary, definitions, short factual recall.

How to play:

• Write your sentence or phrase on a slide with the missing words left blank.
• Add ClassPoint’s Fill in the Blanks button. You can set up to 5 blanks per slide and up to 5 accepted answers per blank, so “colour” and “color” can both count.
• Run it in slideshow. Students type their answers on their devices and submit them to your slide, where you can highlight the correct ones.
• Award stars for correct answers. I also let students pitch an alternative answer for a chance to win a star, which starts some great discussions.

What you need: ClassPoint Pro (Fill in the Blanks isn’t on the free plan), or mini whiteboards for a low-tech version where students hold up their answers.

Keep in mind: each blank takes up to 30 characters, so it works best for single words or short terms. Quiz Mode’s automatic stars only apply to Multiple Choice, so you’ll award stars here yourself.

Here are 150 fun fill in the blank game questions with a free template to get you started.

4. Fly Swatter

Fly Swatter is an easy, tech-free way to practise vocabulary, and students love the bit of drama when two players race for the same word.

Best for: vocabulary, two teams, getting students moving.

How to play:

• Write a spread-out cloud of vocabulary words on the board and split the class into two teams.
• One student from each team comes up, stands with their back to the board, and holds a fly swatter.
• Read out a definition. Both students turn around, find the word, and swat it.
• Whoever swats the right word first wins a point for their team.

What you need: 2 fly swatters, a whiteboard, and a list of words and definitions.

Run it in PowerPoint: project the word cloud on a slide instead of writing it out, and you can reuse it with every class.

Want a modern twist? Try a Fly Swatter round with Gen Alpha slang your students will relate to.

5. Crossword Puzzle

Crosswords are a quiet, focused review game that makes students recall a term and spell it correctly. In a study in the Journal of Food Science Education, undergraduates rated crossword puzzles 4.45 out of 5 for giving them a chance to check how well they understood the course content.

That’s why I sometimes end a unit with a crossword built from the key terms we covered.

Best for: vocabulary, spelling, solo or pair work.

How to play:

• Make a list of terms and clues from the unit. I keep it to about 20 pairs so it fits in one lesson.
• Paste them into an online crossword maker, and it builds the grid for you.
• Print copies, or share the puzzle online, and let students solve it alone or in pairs.

What you need: a crossword maker. A few I’ve used:

• Crossword Labs: free with no registration, and you can print, export to PDF or Word, or have students solve it online.
• BrightSprout (formerly My Crossword Maker): $6 per crossword, or $5 a month for unlimited crosswords.
• Education.com’s Crossword Puzzle Generator: you paste in word and clue pairs and pick a theme for the worksheet.

Run it in PowerPoint: paste the grid onto a slide and add it as a ClassPoint Slide Drawing activity, so every student fills in the letters on their own device and sends it back to you. Lesson tools like Nearpod can also turn a worksheet like this into an interactive activity.

6. Group Contest

A group contest combines teamwork with a bit of competition, and it’s a good way to review bigger tasks that take more than one quick answer.

Best for: teamwork, problem-solving, multi-step questions.

How to play:

• Divide the class into 2 to 4 groups.
• Give a series of questions or challenges that each group must finish within a set time to earn points.
• Keep the time a little tight. It adds challenge and gives students practice recalling under pressure.
• When time is up, the group with the most correct answers wins. Add more rounds and a scoreboard to keep it going.

What you need: an assignment you can turn into a competition, a timer, and a scoreboard.

Run it in PowerPoint: on ClassPoint’s Premium plan, Grouping lets you set up teams in My Class, manually or automatically, award stars to a whole group, and show a group leaderboard between rounds. On any plan, you can keep score with the timer and a simple tally on the slide.

Group work does more than make review fun. UNSW’s teaching guide on group work points to research showing it exposes students to diverse ideas and helps them put concepts into their own words, which leads to a deeper understanding of the content.

7. Headbands

You might know Headbands as a party game. One player holds a card to their forehead without looking at it, and everyone else gives clues until they guess the word. It turns into a great classroom review game with almost no setup.

Best for: explaining concepts, speaking practice, whole class.

How to play:

• One student is the guesser and the rest of the class gives clues.
• Write vocabulary words or concepts on index cards or sticky notes.
• The guesser holds a card to their forehead without looking. Classmates describe the concept without saying the word.
• Set a 2-minute timer and see how many cards they get through.
• Or make it a relay: set 5 minutes, switch the guesser after each word, and count how many students the class gets through.

Explaining a concept in your own words is the idea behind the Feynman Technique, a popular study method. In Headbands, the whole class gets that practice every round.

What you need: a list of terms and some index cards, sticky notes or paper.

8. Team Trivia Race

Who doesn’t love a game show? A team trivia race brings that energy into review with nothing more than questions and a board.

Want something more structured? This Jeopardy PowerPoint game template comes with instructions and sample questions built in.

Best for: fast-paced whole class review, getting students moving.

How to play:

• Divide the class into 2 teams that line up facing the board.
• Ask the first two students a question. Whoever answers first wins a point for their team.
• If teams are even, keep each student up for two questions and alternate who leaves, so the pairings change.
• If both students get it wrong, open it up to anyone for a team point so everyone stays involved.
• Set a timer. The team with the most points at the end wins.

What you need: questions, a whiteboard and a timer.

9. Independent Trivia Race

This is a solo version of the last game. You call up a small group of students, ask a question, and give a point to whoever gets it right first.

Best for: individual accountability, keeping every student on their toes.

How to play:

• Randomly pick 2 to 5 students to come up, or stand at their desks.
• Ask a question. Give the point to whoever answers correctly first, or to anyone who gets a hard one right.
• Keep a running leaderboard, or give out a reward of your choice at the end.

What you need: questions and a name picker, plus an optional timer.

Run it in PowerPoint: ClassPoint’s random name picker spins a wheel of the students in your class, or flips cards to reveal a name. Its auto-picker can draw up to 10 names in one go, which is perfect for choosing each round’s players. Award stars to the winners and the leaderboard keeps score across the whole lesson.

Get started with this ready-made PowerPoint trivia template.

10. Drag and Match

Drag and Match is a simple matching game. Students pair each description with the right term or concept, and they review the lesson as they work it out.

Best for: matching terms to definitions, sorting ideas into categories.

How to play:

• Put descriptions on one side of a slide and the terms or categories they match on the other.
• Mark the descriptions as draggable objects in ClassPoint. Any text box, shape or image works, as long as it has no animation on it.
• In slideshow, invite students up to your screen one at a time to drag a description to its match. Draggable objects are moved on the presenter’s screen, not from students’ devices.
• Reset the positions with one click when you’re ready for the next class.

What you need: ClassPoint’s draggable objects, which come with every plan.

Want every student matching at once? Turn the same slide into a Slide Drawing activity. Students draw lines between matching pairs on their own devices and submit them back to your slide.

Need inspiration? Here are 8 ways to use drag and drop activities in class.

Build Your Review Questions Faster

Every game on this list runs on good questions, and writing them is usually the slowest part. That’s where an AI quiz generator helps.

I use ClassPoint AI in slideshow mode at the end of a lesson. It reads the slide I’m on and suggests a Multiple Choice, Short Answer or Fill in the Blanks question, and I can pick a Bloom’s Taxonomy level, from simple recall up to evaluating and creating. It works in multiple languages, and it’s included on every ClassPoint plan with no credit limit.

I still read every question before I send it to the class. But it turns a lecture deck into a quick review round in a couple of minutes.

Final Thoughts

All of these classroom review games are easy to start with tomorrow. Pick one or two that fit your class, run them at the end of a unit, and watch which questions trip students up. That’s your reteach list before the test.

FAQs About Classroom Review Games