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 is probably fair to say that most people know how to play the game of bingo. It’s a simple and easy to learn game that involves crossing squares off bingo worksheets (also known as “bingo cards” or “bingo boards”) as items are called out, in random order, by the bingo caller.
While many of us have played the standard game of bingo, what you may not know is that many variants of bingo are now being used in today’s classrooms. Bingo is in fact being used as a teaching age for a variety of K-12 school subjects including English (particularly reading and vocabulary), math, languages such as French, Spanish and German, and even geography, history and science. Furthermore, versions of bingo are also being used in some adult education courses such as English as a Second Language (”ESL”) classes.
The main difference between education variants of bingo and the standard game is that specialized bingo worksheets are used. These contain items chosen by the teacher and specific to the subject or lesson, instead of the usual numbers found on bingo worksheets. In an English class they might contain items of vocabulary (the teacher calls out definitions, the teachers must match them to words), in math class, they might be answers to math problems read out by the teacher, and so on.
So the key requirement for a teacher who is considering introducing bingo in their classroom is this custom bingo worksheets. Obviously, it would not be a good use of class preparation time to write out a worksheet for each student by hand, but fortunately there is an answer – using a PC and some bingo worksheets creator software, the worksheets can be made very quickly and with very little effort.
By: Sunil Tanna
I recently wrote an article discussing the importance of teachers using get to know you activities to reduce classroom management problems and improve academic achievement. In that article I shared one of my favorite get to know you activities that I call the “Interview and Introduction”. In this activity students answer a series of questions about themselves on an index card, the teacher then redistributes those cards and then has the students walk around the room “interviewing” each other until they find the person whose card they have. Students then “introduce” each other.
One of the great things about this activity is that the teacher gets to collect the cards and use the information on those cards for follow-up get to know you activities.
In this article I’d like to share with you one of those follow-up get to know you activities. I call it…Get To Know You Bingo.
It’s simple and fun…
First, I take the index cards I collected from the “Interview and Introduction” activity and use the information on them to create bingo cards. I simply go through each index card a place one thing about each student in each bingo square. Each student then gets their own bingo sheet and walks around the room trying to find which of their classmates matches up with which bingo square. When students find a match they get their classmate to sign that particular box. Five signatures in a row wins Bingo!
Of course, it is much easier to create bingo cards if you have some type of bingo card creator software. However, even if you do not own any software to create bingo cards, the time it takes is well worth it! Students are up and moving about the classroom and having lots of fun, but more importantly, students form and build upon their relationships with one another and this will have a huge impact on both classroom management and academic achievement throughout the school year.
By: Adam Waxler
