Many of us, perhaps most of adults, have played bingo at one point or another in their lives. Maybe only once or twice, but nevertheless we know the rules – get a bingo card, check off items from your card as they are called out, and try to be the first person to shout out “Bingo!” if you achieve the winning pattern (a line of five items in any direction in most variants of the game, but sometimes other shapes or patterns may be used).
One thing that you may not have thought about, is how bingo cards are created. This is because, for most us, when we played the game, we were simply given a bingo card that was already printed with numbers, and creating a unique bingo card for each player was simply somebody else’s problem.
Today, you will find however that themed versions of bingo are growing in popularity. At Christmas, on July 4th, Halloween, Easter and other holidays, many people like to organize games based around the particular holiday in question. In this case, the bingo cards are in fact printed with words or phrases relating to the particular holiday. Similarly, more and more teachers are now using bingo as a classroom activity in a diverse range of subjects including K-12 Reading lessons, ESL (English as a Second Language), math, science, foreign languages and more – and in this case, bingo cards containing items appropriate for the particular lesson are used.
So how are these custom bingo cards prepared? One possibility is of course to do so manually – a person could prepare bingo cards using pen and paper, or even a word processor, but it would be a very time consuming process. The main alternative is to instead using special bingo card maker software – you enter a list of possible items, specify how many cards you want, click a button and you’re done.
By: Sunil Tanna
Ice breaker bingo cards are bingo cards printed with people’s names, or with activities or attributes that describe people (e.g. “owns a cat”, “likes eating pizza”, etc.). These cards are used in the game of ice breaker bingo, which is fun method of facilitating introductions between members of a school or college class, or among attendees of a seminar or workshop.
The way that these cards are used are as follows:
1. Before the class, seminar, or event, the teacher or organizer prepares the set of bingo cards. One card needs to be prepared for each attendee, and of course each card should be different from all of the others. It is possible to prepare these cards manually, simply using pen and paper, but of course this can be very time consuming – so it may be easier to make the cards using a computer, printer, and bingo card maker software.
2. Bingo cards with names tend to be most suitable for younger students and introductory English as a Second Language (ESL) classes. Cards with activities are require more confidence and more sophisticated language skills, so are generally more suitable for older students, confident English speakers, etc.
3. In both variants of ice breaker bingo, each player aims to achieve a straight line of 5 items (horizontally, vertically or diagonally) across their bingo card, and the first player to achieve such a line is the winner.
- If playing with names, the teacher (or organizers) goes round the group in random order, asking each person to stand up, talk briefly about themselves, and finishing by introducing themselves by name (e.g. “I love animals of all types. I have a pet named Rover, and I also have two cats named Moggy and Thomas. I am pleased to meet you all, my name is Boris.”). As people introduce themselves, the players cross their names off their card, and the first player to get a line can call “bingo!” – but their bingo doesn’t count unless they can identify each of the people in their winning line.
- If playing with activities or descriptions, the players spend some time circulating among themselves and introducing themselves to each other. When they first a person matching one of the items on the card, they write that person’s name in the square – but each person’s name can only appear once per card.
By: Sunil Tanna
