How to run a Jeopardy review game in class
Updated
Jeopardy is the most-used review format in classrooms for a good reason and it fails in the same three ways every time: the fast students answer everything, the game runs out of clock in the middle of the second column, and the review value goes to whoever was already going to pass. All three are fixable, and none of the fixes is about the board.
Setting it up
Build the board from your assessment, not your unit
Pull clues from the thing students are about to be tested on. A review game built from what you found interesting to teach reviews the wrong material, and students notice the mismatch afterwards, which is when they stop trusting review games.
Put teams together deliberately
Four to six teams of three to five. Mixed ability, assigned by you — self-selected teams sort by friendship, which sorts by prior attainment more often than anyone likes. With more than six teams, most of the room spends most of the game waiting.
Make the team answer, not the student
Require a team to confer before answering, and rotate who speaks for the team each round. This is the single change that most reliably stops the same two students from playing the whole game, and it converts the game from recall to explanation, which is where the review value actually is.
Give a countdown per clue
Ten or fifteen seconds after the clue is read. Without a clock, one hard clue eats three minutes and you lose a column. With a clock, the game paces itself and you can plan around finishing.
Decide the buzz mechanic before you start
Hands, mini whiteboards, or phones as buzzers. Hands make you the judge of every tie, which costs you goodwill you need later. Whiteboards let every team answer every clue, which is better for review but slower. Phones settle the order without you.
Plan for the clock
A 6 × 5 board with a class of thirty runs long. Either play a 4 × 5 board, or accept that you will stop partway and go straight to Final Jeopardy — which is the better ending anyway, since it gives a trailing team a real chance and keeps the room in it.
Scoring that keeps the whole class playing
Standard scoring — right adds the value, wrong subtracts it — rewards being fast and confident, which is a narrower slice of the class than you want. Three adjustments, each of which you can announce in one sentence:
- Every team writes an answer, all correct teams score. Slower, but every student is thinking on every clue instead of one team per clue.
- Award half value for a correct explanation of why a wrong answer was wrong. Turns the mistakes into the teaching moment they should be.
- Cap the wager on Final at a fixed number rather than a team's whole score. Stops the game from being decided entirely by one clue, which is fun on television and demoralising in a classroom.
The three ways it goes wrong
Ranked by how often it happens, with the fix that works.
| What happens | Why | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Four students play, twenty-six watch | Individual buzzing rewards speed, and speed correlates with already knowing it | Team confers, rotating spokesperson |
| You run out of time mid-board | Thirty clues plus discussion does not fit in a period | Smaller board, or jump to Final when ten minutes remain |
| It gets heated | A close score plus an ambiguous clue plus a host who has to adjudicate ties | A clock per clue, and a buzz order nobody has to judge |
Running it without a whiteboard scorekeeper
Keeping score by hand is where a review game loses its last five minutes and its host's attention. Make My Jeopardy runs the board on your projector while every team joins from one phone with a five-letter code — the buzz order is decided by the server, so ties are not yours to call, and the scoreboard updates itself in front of the class.
It is free for a full 6 × 5 board with buzzers, live scoring and Final Jeopardy, and it needs no account and no student logins, which matters if your district's app approval process takes a term. The board library has ready-made review boards by subject if you would rather start from something written and swap in your own clues.
Common questions
How do you stop the same students answering everything?
Make the unit of play the team rather than the student, and rotate who speaks for the team. If you also require a brief reason with the answer, the advantage shifts from recall speed to understanding, which is what you were reviewing.
How long does a classroom Jeopardy game take?
A full 6 × 5 board with a class of thirty takes 45 to 60 minutes once you include conferring and discussion. If you have a 45-minute period, build a 4 × 5 board and keep Final Jeopardy.
What can students use as buzzers if they do not have phones?
Mini whiteboards held up on a count of three work better than buzzers for review, because every team answers every clue. Where phones are allowed, one phone per team is enough — a team buzzer is what you want anyway.
Do students need accounts to play?
Not with Make My Jeopardy. Players open the join link, type the five-letter game code and a name, and they are in. There is no sign-up and nothing to install on a student device.
Make one now
A 6 × 5 board with phone buzzers, live scoring and Final Jeopardy — free, no account. Or copy a ready-made board.
Keep reading
How to make a Jeopardy game
How to build a custom Jeopardy game: how many clues you need, writing clues that play, the scoring rules, and how to run it on the day.
How to give everyone a buzzer
The four ways to run buzz-in — shouting, hands, hardware buzzer sets and phones — and what each costs in fairness, setup time and arguments.
Jeopardy rules, scoring and wagering
The rules of Jeopardy for running your own game: board layout, scoring, Daily Double and Final Jeopardy wagers, and which rules to drop.