Arithmetic is the oldest and simplest branch of mathematics. It also the first branch of mathematics which students encounter, beginning with counting, and then graduating to simple calculations such as adding, subtracting, multiplication and division. Eventually of course, students will encounter other branches of mathematics, such as geometry, trigonometry and algebra, but nevertheless understanding arithmetic continues to be an essential skill. After all, arithmetic is an essential foundation not only for other branches of mathematics, but also numerous areas of everyday life, including business, science and technology.
Like so many other things in life, practice makes perfect in math – the more math and arithmetic that students do, the better they get. While practice can certainly help many students, the other side of the coin is that excessive repetition can soon get boring – and bored students do not learn very well. Good teachers are however very well aware that new styles of presentation, interesting activities, and educational games, can all be used to provide some variation in classroom routines, enlivening what might otherwise seem mundane. One such activity that more and more teachers are turning to, is in fact the game of bingo.
There are many ways that bingo can be uses in math classes – one of the most attractive things about bingo is that it can be very easily adapted to different situations. Perhaps the most popular way of playing bingo in math classes, is for the teacher to act as bingo caller, and the students to each be given a specially printed bingo card containing math problems – instead of marking off items as they are called, students must fill them out with the correct answers.
The main thing that you need to play math bingo is of course the bingo cards printed with math problems. Fortunately that’s easy – you can simply print them from your computer – free ready-made math bingo printables, or easy-to-use bingo card creator software makes the job easy.
By: Sunil Tanna
It’s impossible to overemphasize the importance of students acquiring a good understanding of mathematics. Maths is not only one of the most important school subjects that students study, but it also underpins a variety of other academic disciplines, is a foundation for countless aspects of modern life (including business, commerce, finance, science and technology), and is an essential skill for ordinary everyday living. The study of maths begins with basic numeracy and then arithmetic; recognizing numbers, learning to count, and then progressing to adding, subtracting, multiplying and division.
Like many things in life, students’ skills at maths tend to improve fastest when they are practised regularly. In short, practice makes perfect. However, while it’s certainly true that regularly practising an activity can help a student to improve, teachers also need to remember that too much repetition can eventually become boring for even the most diligent student. It’s common knowledge that bored students tend not to learn very well, and therefore many teachers are always on the look-out for interesting new classroom activities. One such activity that is increasingly popular with many maths teachers is in fact bingo.
In maths bingo, each student is given a printed bingo card containing mathematical problems. The teacher takes the role of bingo caller, and calls out these problems in a random order. If the problem appears on a student’s bingo card, the student must try to fill in the correct answer, and the winner is the first student who fills out a line of 5 correct answers and calls “Bingo!”.
Teachers can also adapt the game for different situations. For example, you could play in teams, you could solve each problem on the blackboard before moving on to the next item, or you could simply vary the type of problems on the bingo cards. There are in fact an almost endless variety of ways that the game of bingo can be used in a maths class, and it is this flexibility that makes the game attractive to so many teachers.
If you plan to play maths bingo, you will need to prepare some suitable bingo cards printed with suitable problems. There’s no need to worry about how to obtain them, since can easily print them from your computer, either by using free ready-made maths bingo printables (downloadable from the Internet), or by getting some bingo card creating software.
By: Sunil Tanna
Bingo is an increasingly popular activity with teachers looking for interesting, challenging, and fun activities to use as teaching aids in their classrooms. There are many reasons why this is happening, but underlying all of them is the fact that teachers are recognizing the suitability of bingo to educational environments. For example, teachers know that bingo is not only easy for students to learn (and fun for them to play), but they also can see the game can be easily adapted to different subjects or lesson plans, and that it can be played using ordinary inexpensive materials.
Pretty much all educational variants of bingo are played using special custom bingo cards. These cards are printed with items specific to the subject of the lesson being taught, rather than the usual numbers, so for example, in an English class, the items might be words that students are learning to read, in a science class, the items might be names of chemicals or elements, and in a geography class, the items might be names of cities, states or countries.
Bingo is particularly suitable for use in math classes; this is because there are a variety of ways to play the game. For example, the bingo cards might be printed with math problems, and students must write in the (correct) answers rather than simply mark items from their cards. Or the cards might contain numbers, and when the teacher calls out a problem, the student must find the corresponding number. Or when teaching fractions, the same number might be presented in different ways (e.g. 3/6 versus 2/4 versus 1/2), and students might be required to solve this type of conversion problem in order to get an item marked off their card.
For all the different educational versions of bingo, the main thing that teachers need is suitable bingo cards. The best way to get them is to print them from your computer – get some bingo card generator software, and it becomes very easy to generate as many as you want. This is much better and cheaper than buying preprinted bingo cards, because you can use the software again and again, and you can also customize the cards’ content to your heart’s content.
By: Sunil Tanna
