My students (Elementary) have shown time and time again that they really DO NOT do their online assignments and when it's time for me to teach them, it gets difficult to bring out games when over half of the class don't really study the materials. I'm not sure how my coteacher teaches them, but bomb games are a no-go since it's a group game and only the ones who know the material answer.

Anyways, does anyone have any suggestions on what review activities I could do with them? I'm thinking of using more writing based activities, but then again, they're just reading and "copying" what they see on the screen. It's no way to help them really review the materials.

Any advice would be great! thank you!

Hi, are you talking about an in class activity or an online class activity. For in the classroom I've had some luck using the rows as teams with a variation on the bomb game. In this each row is a team and the first student in each row stands up. You ask them the question or show them the question or keywords and they put their hand up to try and answer. The student who puts their hand up first answers and then gets first choice of the random point cards (or powerpoint game point cards). However unlike the bomb game other students in the row will still have a chance to answer after the first kid does. They then get to pick a random point card. I usually have five point cards with one being an minus card and another being a big reward card. If either of those cards gets picked the round is over. Show the students an example answer and move onto the next question and the next row. It has the advantage over the bomb game since the kids who did the work still get to answer first but other kids will still get a chance. Plus you still don't have to force kids who are really comfortable with speaking to speak.

It works for social distancing since the kids don't have to face each other or really interact as groups even though they still function as groups.

Its sort of modelled on the idea of family feud. The questions should have more than one correct answer.

I suppose it could work in an online classroom but I haven't had to teach those yet. Fingers crossed and hoping it doesn't come to that.

Good Luck.