Science has an image of being about theories, laws and mathematical formulas. As a result, we don’t always think about studying science subjects, we can easily forget they also involve learning many facts and details. Chemistry is in fact well known for the amount of facts that students studying the subject need to be familiar with. This includes, for example, the names, symbols and properties of elements, chemical formula, and of course the terminology that chemists uses to describe various chemical reactions and processes.
Students who don’t know the key facts of chemistry (such as names of elements, etc.) will of course struggle with the subject, so good teachers tend to seek out ways to assist their students in learning these essentials. Fun, engaging and enjoyable classroom activities offer one of the best ways to learn, so many teachers actively seek out new activities for their students. Educational games turn out to be one of the most popular, and effective, classroom activities. And, one of the most popular educational games is in fact bingo.
Bingo is an almost ideal game for educational situations. Partly this is because almost everybody already knows how to play the game, and those few who don’t can quickly learn how, as well as the fact that the game can be adapted to teaching almost any subject, including chemistry, by using bingo cards printed with squares containing the items being taught, instead of numbers. Also, the game of bingo has the advantage that it does not require expensive specialist materials, which is very important given the financial constraint that teachers work under these days.
To play bingo in the classroom, the teacher plays the part of the bingo caller, each student is given a bingo card, and then you play the game. Of course, the teacher has the option of modifying the style of play if she wants, for example by encouraging classroom dicussion after items are called out, or by requiring students to describe the items that they have marked off from their cards.
Of course, if you’d like to play chemistry bingo in class, you will need to get some bingo cards printed with items related to chemistry. The easiest way for a teacher to obtain such bingo cards, is simply by printing them from her computer. This is simple enough even for computer novices, because of the availability of ready-to-use bingo printables that are available online, and of easy-to-use bingo card printing software, which can print any types of bingo cards that you might need.
By: Sunil Tanna
Most people are familiar with the game of bingo, it’s one of those games that pretty much everybody knows how to play. Of course, most of us think of bingo as leisure activity, but modified versions of the game are increasingly popular with teachers as an educational activity.
There are many reasons why teachers are adapting bingo to classroom use. Apart from being very easy to learn, some of the reasons why bingo is so popular in education is that game play can easily be modified to match a variety of educational situations, and, given the financial limitations which most teachers work under, the fact that no specialist or expensive materials are required to play bingo.
Bingo is an especially popular activity with teachers of foreign languages, including, of course, Spanish. There are many different ways in which the game can be utilized in Spanish class.
Here are some ideas for how Spanish teachers could use the game in their classes (in each case the teacher should act as the bingo caller):
1. Use bingo cards with numbers (as digits) printed in each square (e.g. “4″, “23″ and “57″), but the teacher calls out the numbers in the Spanish (e.g. “cuatro”, “veinte tres”, or “cincuenta siete”). This style of playing is a wonderful way for students to practise their Spanish numbers.
2. You could play use bingo cards printed with letters of the alphabets, times or dates. As with the previous variant, all game play should be conducted in Spanish.
3. You could practice Spanish vocabulary – use bingo cards containing English words, but all bingo cards are made in Spanish.
4. You could also practice English to Spanish translation – for this variant of the game, you should use cards printed with Spanish words, and the teacher makes the calls in English.
As you can see, for most variants of the game, you will need special bingo cards containing things other than the usual numbers. You’re probably wondering how to obtain such cards – but the good thing is that you don’t need to buy them – you can simply print your own bingo cards from your computer. This is easier than you might think – you can download ready-to-use free bingo printables from the Internet, or simply buy some affordable software for printing bingo cards. If you decide to get bingo card printing software, this has the advantage that you will be able to print bingo cards whenever you want, containing whatever customized items you want, in effectively unlimited quantities.
By: Sunil Tanna
Good teachers are always on the look-out for engaging, interesting and fun educational activities to use in their classes. One such activity that is growing in popularity, is bingo. The reasons for this, are that bingo is very easy to learn and play, adaptable to almost any type of lesson, subject or student age group, and is not requiring of expensive specialist materials. In short, it’s an ideal game for use in schools, colleges and other educational situations.
When bingo is played as an educational game, one of the main differences from traditional bingo is that a different style of bingo cards are used. In traditional bingo, bingo cards containing a 5 X 5 grid of numbers are used. However, in educational versions of bingo, each item on the grid is an item specific to the subject being taught – for example the name of a country, city, mountain or river in a geography class, or the names of different plants or animals in a biology class, and so on. Bingo is suitable for use in a range of subjects across the entire curriculum, but is a particular favorite among math teachers. The most common way to play the game is to use bingo cards containing math questions – students must write in the answers to questions that come up, rather than simply tick off squares, but there are other variations too. Another idea is to use bingo cards containing numbers, and in this case, the teacher calls out math problems (or writes them on the blackboard), and the students must mark off the number which is the solution to the problem.
There’s no limit on the kinds of math classes which bingo can be used for. It’s probably fair to say that it’s most popular as a tool for encouraging practice of basic arithmetic, especially multiplication and multiplication tables. That’s not bingo’s only use though! Another popular activity is bingo using fractions or decimals – in this version students may be required to convert between different representations of the same number (e.g. marking off any of 1/2, 2/4, 3/6, 4/8, or 0.5, if the teacher calls “a half”).
To play fraction bingo, or in fact any other educational version of bingo, you will of course need the appropriate special bingo cards. Once upon a time, it wasn’t possible to get cards customized to your exact requirements, and the closest thing was preprinted cards from a specialist publisher (which were also often quite expensive). Today however you can simply print bingo cards using your computer – download some bingo card creator software, and it’s a simple job to printed as many cards as you want, whenever you want.
By: Sunil Tanna
