When a test or quiz approaches in your class, you may be tempted to create a review guide for your students to use for studying. The process of a review guide being made can still be carried out, but preferably by the students. Making one review guide for all students may not give students the best possible help, since some students understand some topics better than others. That being said, it can be effective for students to identify what they need help with.

There is one other, slightly different option, however, if you are tired with the “normal” way of prompting students to review for tests.

You could try asking students make their own review guides because they know better than anybody else what they struggle with. The teacher may have a general idea of where these weaknesses lie, but even in smaller classes, this may be where having students create their own review guides may be advantageous. This is because they have to ask themselves what they need to review again in order to know what to review–it’s actually quite intuitive. As they search for the materials they need to build their own review guides, they will be reviewing the information before a final product is complete without even knowing it! This way, they will have a head start on their studying when they sit down with a finished review guide. And more importantly, the time they’ve already begun to invest in studying has been spent reviewing what they still don’t understand.

In the second part of this article, I will elaborate on places where teachers should be careful when exercising this technique. It is not always the best option, so it is important to pick the method that best suits your class.