If you mention the game of “bingo” to somebody, chances are that will be familiar with the game, and how it is played. It is a very simple game, one that can be learned in minutes, but which nevertheless provides enjoyment to many people. What you may not have realized however is, with a few simple modifications, bingo can be adapted for classroom use, and used by teachers as an educational tool.
Bingo can be an enjoyable activity for many students, and of course this can help them engage with the subject, but it is also ideal for classroom use since it does not require expensive or specialist materials, and the game is flexible enough to be adapted for teaching almost any subject.
The main way that the game is adapted to different subjects, is by using bingo cards printed with items chosen by the teacher, instead of standard numbered bingo cards. The items on the cards can be anything that the teacher feels appropriate for the subject in question, be they words, phrases, or perhaps math problems or musical symbols. Additionally, in some cases, the game rules may also be modified somewhat.
Examples of educational variants of bingo include
* Reading Bingo – This game is indented for younger students learning to read. They must simply find words on their cards when they are read out. Very often the words are chosen from the Dolch sight word list, or similar introductory word lists
* Math bingo – The bingo cards are printed with math problems that the students must correctly solve in order to check off the corresponding square. The problems could be equations, reducing a fraction, etc.
* Foreign language bingo – These version of the game could be played in a language learning class, be that French, Spanish, German, Italian or any other language. The bingo cards are printed with words in that language, and the students must find the correct matching word when the teacher calls out the English equivalent.
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
