Exam Prep: Plea and Proposals

I'm beggin' ya...don't deprive students of the meaningful cognitive work of making THEIR OWN reviews or summaries as exam prep! 

I know it's efficient if teachers make a tidy handout for students, but then all the work of the review, the sifting and the sorting, the thinking about what's been learned, the decision-making, the writing and processing, is done by the teacher. 

Some ideas for how to do this as group work:

1. Have students work in small groups with each group responsible for the presentation of important knowledge and skills from a particular unit of study. You know your students, and the sizes of the units, so determine how much time is group work time. Give a specific limit for presentation time too. You could also require a product: a one page summary to photocopy and share with peers, a poster, a Google Doc to post to Google Classroom or to share with peers...
2. Student-generated questions for review topics. To keep things organized, the teacher could assign topics or categories to pairs or small groups. Each group could come up with 5 questions of increasing difficulty for their categories. This could be done "Jeopardy Game Show" style or as a straightforward quiz or practice session. 
3. Make a Google Doc and share it with everyone in a class. Set up sections and have individuals, or pairs, or small groups post knowledge and skills to their assigned section. Students could do this as homework or in class.
4. Game of Four Corner Fun. You're doing most of the work with this one, but if you feel you must be the selector of important knowledge and skills, this game will give you that opportunity. It also has students moving around the room. 
5. Game of Baseball Review. Again, you're the arbiter of importance, but it does put a coating of fun on what could be a review. 
6. Problem-solving...an open-ended option and a closed one. Tried and true and covered in a brief article.