PULTEVENT
Classroom review games: 7 formats for test week
Sixth period, the Thursday before the unit test. Twenty-eight juniors, a projector with a lens nobody has wiped since August, and fifty minutes to make the Reconstruction amendments stick. Worksheets have already been tried. What works at this hour is a scoreboard and a rival table.
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I built this tool for parties, weddings and office nights. The review-day version is the same machine with different questions. The teacher's laptop runs the console in a browser, the classroom projector shows the board, and students join from their phones by scanning a QR code on the screen. There is no student sign-up and no account to create.
One thing up front: the phone games need phones with internet. If your school keeps phones in a pouch, there is a team-captain way to play that needs only a handful, and a couple of formats that need none. Both are below.
Seven review formats for the projector
1 Super Smarts board
A quiz board with categories across the top and point values down the side. A team picks a square, the question opens on the projector, and they answer. Replace the built-in questions with your own through the custom questions button.
How to run it. Make one category easy on purpose, so the weakest team has a way back. You can tap the squares from your phone and walk the room instead of standing at the laptop.
Choosing which square to risk is its own lesson. Teams start weighing what they actually know.
2 True or False
Mark each statement true or false in advance. When you open voting, Believe and Don't believe buttons appear on the students' phones. Reveal the truth and the verdict comes up with a sound effect.
How to run it. Write statements that sound right but are wrong. The best ones are the mistakes you saw on last year's test.
It shows you in ten seconds how much of the room believes the myth. You will know where to spend Friday.
3 Timeline round
Cards with events that have to be put in order, from earliest to latest. It works for dates in history, stages of mitosis, the steps of a lab, or the plot of the novel you just finished.
How to run it. Give each team one minute to agree before the captain places the cards. The debate is where the reviewing happens.
Putting events in sequence tests understanding, not recall. A team that can explain why is a team that will pass.
4 Your own quiz, built at home
The quiz builder takes your questions, photos, video clips and audio. Build it the night before, run it on the projector, and move between questions from your phone.
How to run it. Write it straight from the test blueprint. Two questions per learning objective is a good rule.
Once it exists, next year's review is a matter of changing a few questions.
5 Phone quiz with a countdown
Each question shows four options on every phone. Bars rise on the projector as answers come in. A 20, 30 or 45-second countdown closes the question, and the right answer turns green.
How to run it. Pause after every question where the bars split evenly. That is the concept the class has not got yet.
The whole class answers every question, not just the three kids who always raise their hands.
6 Team scoreboard
A full-screen score for each team. You add points after each round, a label shows which round they came from, and the running total stays on the wall. At the end there is an awards ceremony with a fun award for each team.
How to run it. Keep the teams the same for the whole unit. By the third review day they will have a name, a captain and a grudge.
A score that carries across rounds keeps the back row involved until the bell.
7 Vocabulary charades
One student acts out a word without speaking, their team guesses. Type in your own word list: vocabulary, historical figures, elements, literary devices.
How to run it. Use it for the last ten minutes of the period, when heads are down. Set a short timer per word.
Acting out “photosynthesis” is ridiculous, and ridiculous is memorable.
A points board for the whole unit
Super Smarts is a grid of categories and point values. Teams pick a square, you reveal the question, and the harder squares are worth more.
True or false from every desk
Students tap Believe or Don't believe on their phones, then the answer is revealed with a sound. Common misconceptions fall apart quickly.
History in the right order
Timeline hands out cards that go from earliest to latest. Amendments, battles, stages of a process, events in a novel.
Scores that carry over
The team scoreboard keeps a running total across rounds on the projector, so the last round still matters.
The phone question
Some schools allow phones for a class activity, some keep them in pouches all day. If phones are allowed, every student answers from their own, and every phone counts once per question. If not, pick one captain per team and let only those phones join. Super Smarts, Timeline and charades need no student phones at all.
Check two things with your IT office before test week: that the site is not blocked on the school network, and whether students can use the guest Wi-Fi. They can always fall back on mobile data, but the game will not run without a connection.
Other subjects, same formats
In math, True or False works well for common errors: a statement with a sign mistake, a rule applied where it does not apply. In English, Timeline sorts plot events, and the board can hold categories like themes, characters and quotes. In science, put the steps of a process on timeline cards and let the teams build it.
World languages get a bonus. Student screens show the interface in each phone's language, and the questions can be in whatever language you are teaching.
No accounts, no student data
Students join by scanning a code. They do not create accounts, give an email address or install anything. Quiz answers are anonymous, so even the teacher does not see who answered what.
That is a feature for review day and a limit for grading. This is a review game, not a gradebook.
A fifty-minute review period
Five minutes to connect the projector and let students scan in. Ten minutes of true or false to surface the misconceptions. Twenty minutes on the Super Smarts board. Ten on a timeline round. Five for the final scores and the awards, which the class will pretend not to care about.
Save charades for the Friday before, when nobody has any focus left.
If you teach the same course in three periods, keep a separate scoreboard for each. Nothing motivates second period like hearing that fourth period beat them.
Keeping it fair for the quiet kids
Hands-up review rewards the same five students every time. When every phone answers every question, the student in the back corner who never speaks gets the same shot as the one who always does, and nobody sees who picked what. One round of bars on the wall can tell you more about a class than a week of raised hands.
Mix the teams yourself. Left to choose, friends cluster, and one table ends up with all the answers and none of the fun.
Language and built-in content
The host console is getting an English interface, and student screens follow the language of each phone. The ready-made quiz decks in the library are mostly Russian for now, so plan on writing your own review questions in the quiz builder. For a test review you would anyway.
About the author
PULTEVENT was built by Ruslan Barashkin, an event host since 2014 with more than 500 events behind him. The TOP 100 Awards named him best host in Moscow in 2024 and in Saint Petersburg in 2023. He wrote the console for his own nights first: pultevent.ru/en.
Try it free for 3 days, no card needed.
How to run a review game on the projector
- 1
Write the questions from the test blueprint in the quiz builder, plus the true-or-false statements and the timeline cards.
- 2
Split the class into four to six teams and name a captain for each.
- 3
Connect the laptop to the projector, open the stage window there, and switch on live mode.
- 4
Put the QR code up and let students (or only the captains) scan in.
- 5
Run true or false, then the board, then the timeline, adding points to the scoreboard after each.
- 6
Show the final scores, run the awards, and note which questions split the room for tomorrow's lesson.
FAQ
Do students need to create accounts?
What if our school does not allow phones?
Does it work on the school Wi-Fi?
Can I see which student answered what?
Are there ready-made quizzes for my subject in English?
Can I use it for a remote lesson?
How long does setup take in class?
What does it cost?
See also
Run brighter events — with PULTEVENT
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