Educational bingo is increasingly popular as a classroom activity as more and more teachers are realizing that the game can easily be adapted to a variety of different lesson plans. Apart from the simple fact that students of all ages can enjoy the game, there are many other reasons by bingo is growing in popularity, not least the fact that it’s very inexpensive to play (important given the constraints that today’s teachers work under), but also the facts that game play mechanics can be modified to teaching pretty much any subject to any age range of students.
Bingo can play a role in teaching many different subjects, including math (the squares on bingo cards can be printed with math problems for which students must write in the answers rather than simply marking off squares), telling the time, geography, history, science, foreign languages, and yes, reading. In fact, bingo particularly excels in reading classes, and it is here that the game is most commonly encountered in schools.
In reading bingo, the game is played using the same basic game play mechanics as traditional bingo – the player’s (student’s) objective is to find a line of five matching items vertically, horizontally or diagonally as the items are announced by the bingo caller (teacher), however the bingo cards are printed with words instead of the usual numbers. These words can be sight words (words that students must learn to immediately recognize in order to achieve reading fluency), words that students are in the process of practicing this week, or they can be chosen specially in order to practice a variety of phonics games. Some examples of phonics games, include the teacher asking students to find rhymes, find a longer word that contains a shorter word or sound, find a word that the teacher reads out slowly (e.g. “fff-lll-aaa-p”) so that students must practice “blending” letters, and so on.
By: Sunil Tanna
An increasing number of non-native speakers of English around the world wish to learn the language. This is no doubt for a variety of different reasons, and includes people who wish to come to a largely English-speaking country (such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland) to live, work, study, or just visit, and people who wish to learn English for professional reasons. The professional demand for English comes from increasing ubiquity of the Internet (as you no doubt are aware, English has become the dominant language for online communications), and English’s status as a global lingua franca of business, commerce, diplomacy, science, technology, and aviation.
With the demand to learn “English as a Second Language” (ESL) or “English as a Foreign Language” (EFL), also comes a demand for teachers of that subject. For native English speakers, including young people such as recent university graduates, going abroad to “Teach English as a Foreign Language” (TEFL), provides an excellent opportunity to travel and see the world.
TEFL teachers aim is to provide their students with a good understanding of both spoken and written activities. Learning is facilitated by a variety of classroom activities, including both speaking and reading English. Ideally such activities will enjoyable and engaging for the students, as well as being educational.
One game that is very well suited to be used as a classroom activity is bingo. The game is very easy to learn and play, doesn’t have complicated rules, doesn’t require expensive equipment, and can in fact be adapted to teaching many different topics.
In English class the game can be played:
1. Ahead of time, before the class, the teacher should prepare bingo cards for each student. The cards should contain the types of items that form the subject of the lesson – for example, they might numbers, be they might also be dates, times or English words. A particularly popular choice is “sight words”, which are common English words which students need to be able to instantly recognize in order to read English fluently. Anyway, these cards can be prepared by the teacher simply printing them from her computer – this is easy since ready-made free bingo printables can be download from the Internet, or the teacher can purchase low cost bingo card printing software which will allow her to print unlimited quantities of bingo cards on any subject at all.
2. At the start of the class, each student is given their own bingo card. You can then play the game normally, with the teacher playing the part of the bingo caller. Students can either mark off the items from their cards as they are called, or cover the squares on the cards with a coin or counter if you wish to re-use the cards in a subsequent lesson.
Playing bingo in class can be a lot of fun – but it’s also excellent practice for learning English – provided of course that the game is conducted entirely in English! Smart teachers can also adapt the game with their own twists that enhance the educational element of the game – for example, they might require that the student who claims “Bingo” to read out (in English) all the items that they have marked off.
By: Sunil Tanna
At some point in their lives, most people have played the game of bingo, but even those who haven’t probably do know how to play the game. Even if you don’t know however, it’s very easy to learn!
1. One person acts as the bingo caller and referee.
2. The other participants are all players.
3. Each of the players is given a bingo card containing a grid of squares, each square containing a number.
4. The bingo caller calls out numbers in a random order, and the players mark off any square on their cards which matches the number.
5. When a player gets a complete line across his card (vertical, horizontal or diagonal), he calls out “Bingo!”. The first player to call bingo is the winner.
6. If you prefer a longer game, instead of a single winning line you can require two or more complete lines, or even players to mark off every single item on their bingo card.
So far so good – you’re probably already familiar with all the above. Today however, variations on the standard game, most frequently using bingo cards containing customized items based around a particular theme (instead of numbers), are growing in popularity.
Some examples include:
- Bingo has become very popular with teachers. This is because it can be adapted to almost any lesson or subject, and thus become a fun as well as educational classroom activity.
- Holiday bingo is played using cards relating to a particular holiday. For example a Christmas-themed game would be played using cards containing words like “angel”, Bethlehem or “shepherds”. Of course there are many other holidays around the year which can be used to inspire specially themed bingo games, including New Year, Valentine’s Day, July 4th, and Halloween.
- Wedding and baby shower bingo are also growing in popularity. As you might expect, these variants are played using words relating to weddings or babies.
If you fancy playing any of these versions of bingo, you will of course need bingo cards relating to your chosen theme. While it may be possible to obtain preprinted cards for certain (not all!) themes from a specialist publisher, the cheapest and most flexible option is almost certainly to print them yourself using your computer. If you use some bingo card creator software, you can simply put in a list of the possible items, and the software will generate as many different cards as you want.
By: Sunil Tanna
