If Chemistry Review Feels Like a Waste, Try This Instead
- Brennan Koch
- 1 hour ago
- 3 min read
Quick Answer: The Ping Pong Review is a fast, partner-based chemistry review strategy where students alternate steps on a problem, creating built-in feedback and deeper engagement.
Your students need review. But if you are like most high school chemistry teachers, the word “review” makes your skin crawl. You are forced to decide whether review is worth the minutes in your class. Is it actually helping students master chemistry concepts—or just filling time? I discovered an efficient review system while team-teaching in biology that is now making its way into my chemistry classroom. It’s simple, fast, and actually works. It makes review more efficient for everyone, and tolerable for you! I call it the Ping Pong Review—a simple chemistry review strategy. But don’t worry—there are no little white ping pong balls involved.
How to Use the Ping Pong Review in Your Chemistry Classroom
Every pair of students gets a small whiteboard and dry erase marker. That’s it—no papers and no copies. Take your review question and break it into several steps. For example, here is a chemistry review problem broken into steps:
Write the equation for combustion of methane.
Balance.
Calculate the mass of water produced by burning 42.5 L of methane at STP.
Calculate the mass of water produced by burning 81.4 L of oxygen at STP.
Circle the theoretical yield.
Circle the limiting reagent.
Each task should build on the last so that the students are progressing through a problem together. Since the step that the other student is completing affects their ability to answer the next question, attention is demanded of both students.
Students Alternate Tasks
The students then alternate tasks working on the same whiteboard. One writes the equation. The other balances it. The first student does the first calculation. They keep switching jobs from writer to editor. Then they can show their board. You don’t need to grade every step—just scan the final product. If you know the final answers, it takes very little time to see if they did it correctly and identify the problem.
When something is wrong, it takes little time to identify which step went wrong. Since both students were paying attention, they can probably show you where the error took place, even if they aren’t sure what they actually did wrong.
Benefits of the Ping Pong Review for Student Engagement and Understanding
If you have the questions prepared beforehand, students can grab whiteboards and markers in seconds. You are into meaningful review in minutes. Then, once they are in the process, you’ve introduced a partner that acts as a live editor. They catch the other person’s mistakes quickly (hopefully!). This immediate feedback loop is what makes the Ping Pong Review so effective. It encourages the students to talk, which engages their thinking more deeply. They aren’t just answering; they are reasoning out loud. And best of all, there is no review worksheet that ends up in your grading.
If you haven’t reviewed like this, you will be amazed at how important talking and live editing are. Student performance goes up. And you don’t have to sweat review time. This simple chemistry review strategy helps students think, talk, and actually understand the content.
Less practice. More thinking.
The Ping Pong Review works because students talk through every step. That same principle drives Stoich Decks games—students explain, challenge, and refine their thinking as they play.
No worksheets. No passive review. Just engagement that sticks.
And if you want to build real metric intuition, Metricize is coming soon. It’s a classroom game where students estimate, compare, and defend answers across mass, length, density, and speed—turning memorized units into real understanding. Pre-orders launch soon with 20% off.
