On the first day of class with my sophomore modern world history students, I broke them up into seven groups, and assigned each a thematic element from their freshman history class to summarize on a poster. Groups were formed in Canvas, our learning management system, and will persist all semester (I created two sets of groups, one set with 4 students per group and another with 5 students per group). While students worked, I had music playing in the background (largely to mask the noise of nearby groups.)
When finished, the posters were hung on the walls, and students walked around and took pictures of each poster with their iPad. They then inserted the seven pictures into a single file in Notability. After reviewing each and thinking about their World History 1 class, students took a 20-question test, based on the World History & Geography New York Regents Exam, to see how much they remember from freshman year. The graph is shown above, and with three-months since their last World History class and no real studying before this test, they did remarkably well.
Class felt good. Students were engaged, they were able to meet their small working groups and complete a simple project as a group, and I was able to observe their working habits.