Put a button wall on the whiteboard, line the teams up in front of it, and give every child one press. That is the whole of Reaction Relay. A question sits above six answer keys. The child at the front of the line walks up, presses one key, and sits back down. A right answer wins the team a point. A wrong answer costs a point, and that key closes for the rest of the question. First team to the target wins.
Nobody gets a second press. The confident child cannot carry the team and the quiet one cannot hide at the back, because the line moves on regardless.
Because it is the only thing that makes children read the question. Take the minus away and a quiz relay turns into a hand-speed contest: press fast, press again, press until something lights up. Make a mistake cost a point and pressing without reading gets expensive. You can watch the moment it lands. One team drops from four to two, and suddenly every team is reading the question twice.
It builds something else as well. A team sitting on minus one can still win, and they often do. Losing ground and clawing it back teaches more than a clean run of ten ever does.
A wrong answer belongs to the team, not to the child who pressed it. That single rule changes the room. Teams stop pointing at whoever got it wrong and start doing the useful thing instead: reading the next question together before their turn arrives, quietly checking each other, telling the child at the front to slow down. It is one of the few classroom games where the strongest thing a team can do is take the pressure off.
Because it is not a speed race, the child who reads slowest can be the reason their team wins.
One wall, two, or three. Run a single wall for the whole class working as one team, which is the calmest version and the easiest to model first. Run two walls head to head for a 1v1. Run three walls for the full relay, which is how most classes end up playing it.
Any subject works as long as a question has one right answer and five plausible wrong ones. The six keys should all be the same kind of thing, so the wrong answers are not obvious at a glance:
| Subject | A question on the board | The six keys |
|---|---|---|
| Maths | What is three quarters of an hour in minutes? | 45 · 30 · 15 · 20 · 40 · 50 |
| Science | Which process do plants use to make their own food? | photosynthesis · condensation · evaporation · respiration · pollination · germination |
| History | In which year did the Great Fire of London start? | 1666 · 1066 · 1485 · 1605 · 1815 · 1939 |
| Grammar | A word telling you how an action was done | adverb · noun · verb · adjective · pronoun · preposition |
| Geography | What is the capital city of Norway? | Oslo · Helsinki · Stockholm · Copenhagen · Dublin · Lisbon |
| Spelling | A room where science experiments happen | laboratory · library · calendar · February · separate · necessary |
Choose how many teams, then either type a topic and have the questions written for you, pick one of the ready-made sets, or write your own. Age bands run from 5–7 up to 16–18, so the questions land at the right level. If you write your own, you only type the question and its answer — the other five keys are filled from your own list of answers, so you never have to invent wrong answers. There is nothing to print and nothing for children to log into.
If you have a class list saved, Reaction Relay can split it into teams and show whose turn is next at the bottom of each wall, which removes the argument about who is up.
I first played this with my Year 6s. What I love is that the minus point stops them rushing — they have to slow down and think carefully before they press anything.
But the bigger lesson is what it does to the group. Getting one wrong and letting the team down feels awful, and the children know it — so they learn to be careful with each other’s feelings, to pick each other up rather than pile on. That’s resilience, and it’s a lesson they learn together, not one you have to teach.
— Rob, the teacher behind Sage
Is there a whole-class quiz game where everyone gets a turn?
Yes. Reaction Relay lines teams up in front of the whiteboard and gives each child exactly one press before they sit down, so the turn comes round to every pupil rather than to the fastest hand.
Do pupils need devices or logins?
No. Everything happens on the whiteboard at the front. Children come up to the board and press an answer. No pupil accounts, no join codes, nothing to install.
Why do wrong answers lose a point?
To stop it becoming a guessing race. A minus point makes reading the question worth more than reaching the board first, which is the behaviour most quiz games accidentally train out of children.
How long does a game take?
About ten to fifteen minutes for a class of thirty, because each turn is a single press. It fits a starter, a plenary, or the last slot before lunch.
Which subjects does it work for?
Any subject with one right answer and five plausible wrong ones. Times tables, spelling rules, history dates, science vocabulary, French words, grammar terms, capital cities. Type a topic, pick a ready-made set, or write your own questions.
Can I play it with one team instead of three?
Yes. Choose one wall for the whole class working together, two walls for a head to head, or three walls for the full relay.
More whole-class games for the whiteboard: Quizmaster is a team quiz with tiles and power-ups, Grudgeball has teams knocking out each other’s lives, and The Big Ten hides ten answers behind one topic. For a quiz where every pupil answers on their own device, try Lightning Round.