Some revision lessons need to be quiet and focused. Others need a bit of noise. When a class has hit a wall, nothing brings them back like splitting the room into two teams and putting a game show on the board.
We’ve made a set of free quiz-show games in PowerPoint for AQA GCSE Physics. They work for Separate Physics (8463) and Combined Science: Trilogy (8464).
The four topics
- Energy resources: fossil fuels, nuclear fuel, renewables, reliability and environmental impact
- Working scientifically: variables, accuracy and precision, resolution, uncertainty, errors, graphs and units
- Conduction, convection and radiation: particle explanations, convection currents, infrared, insulating a home and the vacuum flask
- The electromagnetic spectrum: the order, properties, uses and hazards
Every topic has a Blockbusters game and a Pointless game. Some also have a 20-question multiple-choice quiz and a 20-statement True or False quiz.
Blockbusters: race across the board
Two teams, orange and blue, race across a board of 20 lettered hexagons. Click a letter and a question appears. The answer always starts with that letter, which is a useful hint for weaker students and a race against the clock for everyone else. Click Show answer, then the winning team’s button to colour the hexagon.
Classroom tip: before revealing the answer, ask the team to say it in a full sentence. “Infrared” gets the hexagon. “Infrared, because hotter objects emit more of it” gets the hexagon and a round of applause.
Pointless: the lowest score wins
Six rounds where teams try to give correct answers that few other people would think of. Click the numbered tile for the answer a team gives to reveal its score. The scores are our estimates for a typical GCSE class rather than survey results, but the effect is the same: students start digging for the less obvious answers, which is exactly what deeper revision looks like.
Ask a class to name a renewable energy resource and everyone says wind or solar. Pointless rewards the team that remembers tidal, geothermal or biofuel.
Before the lesson
- Open the file in Microsoft PowerPoint on a computer and start the slide show. The clickable parts only work in Slide Show, not in Google Slides or Keynote.
- Stay on the game slide while playing. Pressing space or an arrow key moves on.
- Every game has a teacher answer slide at the end, and the answers are in the speaker notes too.
Make the game count
A game is most useful at the end of a topic or as a warm-up before a test. Keep a mini whiteboard on every desk so the whole team writes an answer before anyone shouts, then finish with five minutes of the True or False quiz done individually. The game builds energy; the quiz shows you who actually knows it.
Download the free quiz-show games, or browse all the GCSE Physics games on the site.
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