I have played Jeopardy with my students before as a review activity, and in my teaching experience thus far, it has worked with all ages and gotten everyone involved in friendly competition. Playing it in a graduate level class further proved its flexibility and success as a tool for review.

The first time that I encountered Jeopardy in a pedagogical context was at the Middlebury-Monterey Language Academy (for high schoolers), where I worked for three summers. Towards the end of the 4-week program, at one of the evening assemblies, one of the teachers orchestrated a group game of Jeopardy having to do with French culture. The categories included history, music, food, etc. In addition to reviewing some of the things the students had covered in their classes, some of the tougher questions also provided an opportunity to learn. In my own learning, I’ve found that the questions that stump you are the answers you never forget.

When I taught in France, I used Jeopardy as a review activity every couple of weeks. Since I didn’t see the students every day, this was a fun way to refresh their memory of what we had been working on. Since I was teaching elementary schoolers ages 5-10, reviewing and repetition was crucial. After four units such as weather, seasons, months, and numbers, I would create a jeopardy game with the content. I would split the classes into four groups, and each would come up with their own team name in English, which was very limited so they came up with some pretty silly stuff such as “the pajamas” or “the Barack Obamas”. All of the classes got really enthusiastic about the game and looked forward to the days that we played it.

I played Jeopardy with my high schoolers last year as well, and it had the same result: fun, friendly competition, and successful review. They were taking French for the first time, so I adapted the content of my previous Jeopardy games from English into French, since the language level and much of the vocabulary units were the same. However, I incorporated grammar and tenses into the questions more, since they were older and had more language awareness than my previous French youngins.

Playing Jeopardy in Principles & Practices similarly provided a successful review and wrap-up of the concepts and units we covered throughout the course. This particular game had more categories than I have ever employed in my own adaptations of the game, which just goes to show how much we have learned this semester. I really liked that our knowledge of our classmates and our professor was also incorporated into it, since we spent a great deal of the first month reading each others’  language learning histories. Overall, using Jeopardy in P&P further solidified my faith in Jeopardy as an enjoyable and effective tool for review.