First, game shows are a really fun way to present or review information. When I taught fifth graders, I always hosted a game show the day before a big test. My favorite one to host was Who Wants to Be a Winner (I didn't have money to give away, so I changed the game show's name slightly). I used a template I made in PowerPoint where I could enter my own questions. The champion of a simple competition got to sit in the "hot seat" to answer the game's questions. The rest of the class watched as the "studio audience." To add a game show feel, I turned out the lights and fired up a colorful disco ball when the questions got harder.

Who Wants to Be a Winner is even more fun when the lights are out and the disco ball is on.

You can find PowerPoint templates for popular game shows online, like Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader, Jeopardy, Hollywood Squares, and Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Many of these templates even come with music and sound effects or you can add your own. Download free templates from the PowerPoint Games and Classroom Game Templates pages. If you don't have PowerPoint, there's JeopardyLabs, where you input your questions and play online in your web browser.

Classroom game shows are bound to engage students. They are great when teachers do the hosting, but students could certainly prepare the show and host it. The most time-consuming part is coming up with questions when you are using pre-made templates. Often, students learn the most when they are the ones writing the questions.

Another fun and fast-paced way for students or teachers to present or review information is Pecha Kucha. Pecha Kucha is Japanese for chit-chat and involves a slideshow with exactly 20 slides. Each slide is on the screen for exactly 20 seconds; PowerPoint or Keynote is set to automatically advance the slides. That means 20 slides x 20 seconds is 6 minutes and 40 seconds. The specific time limit makes for short and concise presentations. The Pecha Kucha presentations I've seen have been informative and visually interesting. They also become silly and extremely entertaining when the slideshow zooms ahead of the presenter.

I know that teachers often thrive on routine. But breaking that routine and doing something unique and different can engage students. Adding novelty and variety sometimes involves complex activities while others are quite simple. Here are some more ways to bring novelty and variety into the classroom:

• Use humor. We're not all comedians, but we all can use the Internet to find jokes. I like to search Google for jokes about the day's topic. Sharing humorous examples or telling jokes about the content you're teaching makes it memorable and grabs your students' attention. I like to think about eye-rolling and groaning as a personal victory in the classroom.
• Show interesting and funny images. There are so many places on the web to find pictures your students are sure to find interesting or humorous. I've listed sites where you can do things like add speech bubbles to historical photos, write the day's agenda on Einstein's chalkboard, and create a newspaper clipping about how important it is to study for the next science test.
• Make a presentation using Prezi. A Prezi presentation is a break from ordinary slide shows. Prezi is a website that calls itself "the zooming editor for stunning presentations." The best way to understand what Prezi does is to check out this example about BioGasol.

What are ways you bring novelty and variety into your classroom? Please leave a comment!