Head on over to my new blog, The Social Studies Life, for a free, interactive review of Colonial America. This is a great, quick refresher of that content you covered many months ago! Use it to help your students review for the end of course tests.
I stumbled across this quiz today on the US Presidents. It’s only 10 questions, but it would be a good, quick little time-filler at the beginning or end of class. It doesn’t have a lot of ads on the page either, unlike most online quizzes, which is a plus! I decided to look through all of their quizzes on the page and find any that were relevant to US History. See below for links!
You could use them as an introduction to a topic or to quickly gauge the overall knowledge of the class. These would also be an easy, fun way to do a little end of the year test prep/review. You can project the quiz on the board and complete it orally together or have students silently write their answers before you reveal the correct answer. I find that these quizzes are a fun way to fill a few minutes as a class when your students’ brains are fried and their attention-span is gone. In my opinion, an informal approach works best with these.
Here’s a quick Veteran’s Day quiz. Project it on your board and go through it as a class. (Let the students silently answer the question, and then take an informal vote as to which answer you should choose.) When checking the answers, make sure you read the information that explains the correct answer before moving on. Use this quiz to activate prior knowledge or as a filler at the end of class. If you do my Quick Veteran’s Day lesson, I’d do it after the reflection, at the end of class, or the next day as a quick review.
Here are two ten-question quizzes about Thanksgiving. The first one has fewer adds. Both give feedback explaining wrong answers. The questions on both are similar. Use these as a fun bell ringer or as filler at the end of class before Thanksgiving holidays.
Aren’t online quizzes fun? They test your knowledge and give you immediate feedback. Occasionally, BrainPop will have free stuff on their site. (Click here to see what they are offering for free at the moment.) They currently have a video and quiz about Martin Luther King, Jr. The video is very informative but may be a little childish for high schoolers. However, the 10-question quiz is interactive and would be a great bell ringer or warm-up at the beginning a class or lesson (if you have an interactive board or projector). Go through each question and have the students collectively pick the correct answer. It’s not a ground-breaking resource, but it would be a great tool to break the monotony of doing the same thing every day. This resource may not be free indefinitely, but I used it last month and it’s still free now.
Use this resource to:
There are five minutes left in class. Â Your students are tired. Â It’s too late to start anything new and you don’t have an exit ticket idea to fill the time. Â What do you do? Â It’s always a good idea to have some quick, fun “filler” activities up your sleeve for just such a time. Â Here is a great one…
For years I’ve been using Encyclopedia Britannica instead of Wikipedia. Â (I want a reputable source for my information, rather one that literally anyone can edit.) Â I have NEVER noticed, until today, that they have a tab at the top of their page called “Quizzes.” Â I clicked on it and, what do you know, they have a bunch of free quizzes. Â Wouldn’t it be convenient if they happened to have some about US history? Â Well, they do! Â These quizzes are usually around 10 questions and are graded immediately after you answer each question. Â The only catch is that each question must be answered within 10 seconds or it is counted wrong, and those 10 seconds go by really fast! Â The faster you answer, the higher your score is. Â On the score page at the end of the quiz, you can scroll down for detailed answers to each question.
How can you use this?  Bookmark these quizzes and put them in a folder in your browser labeled “Filler” (or maybe something less obvious to your students, like “5 Minute Fun”).  Then, you can pull one or two of these up on your projector or interactive board and let your students try them.  Since this is a filler activity, you can let the kids just yell out the answers and quickly decide what they collectively think is the correct answer..  If that is too loosey-goosey for you, have them answer silently and keep track of their points on a scratch sheet of paper.
There are over 150 history quizzes!  (They also have a Geography section.)  I’m providing links below to the ones that I like best.  You can also click here and scroll down to browse all of their quizzes.  One other thing to note: you don’t have to do a quiz that is associated with the content you are currently covering.  Sometimes it’s good to throw some random knowledge out there and remind students that any learning is good, regardless of whether it will “be on the test.”
First Ladies of the United States
John Adams or John Quincy Adams
Soldiers in Petticoats: Â Fact or Fiction
19th Amendment and Women’s Suffrage
Which of these quizzes is your favorite? Â What’s the highest score you or your class achieved? Â Let us know how you did in the comments below!
What does the “D” stand for in D-day? Â This is a question that you will be asked every year you teach US History. Â I found a quick little quiz about D-Day, which includes the answer to that question. Â The quiz is just a quick 8-question quiz, but you can use it for several things:
The one downer about this quiz is that it doesn’t actually grade the answers; it just gives you the correct answers via a link at the bottom. Â So, you need to have students write down their answers and compare. Â If you are doing this in front of the class, the best way would probably be to have the quiz open on one tab and the answer page open in another tab for quick access. Â It’s a small resource, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t useful. Â Anything that can save you time and engage students is always a plus!