Phonics is a popular method of teaching children to read that is based around the child learning to connect sounds with letters or groups of letters. For example, the child would learn that the hard “k” sound is associated with the letters “c”, “k” or “ck”. To be fair, using phonics as a method of teaching reading has not been without controversy, particularly in the United States of America, at least since the mid 19th century, and especially since the reemergence of phonics in the 1950s.
Those teachers who do use phonics, generally use them in a variety of different classroom activities, not just when students are reading from books or writing. For example, phonics and phonics-based skills can be incorporated into many different classroom activities and educational games, including, for example, bingo.
Phonics bingo is played like the traditional game of bingo: Each player (student) is given a card containing a five by five grid of squares, and aims to mark of a line of items (horizontally, vertically or diagonally) in response to items called out by the bingo caller (teacher). The different however between phonics bingo and traditional bingo, is that the cards, instead of being printed with numbers, are printed with words appropriate to the subject of the lesson. Additionally, game play may be modified in a variety of different ways.
Some ideas for phonetics bingo include:
1. Partial word bingo – The teacher says something like “find the word with ‘pin’ in it”, in response to which the students would have to find “spin”.
2. Blending bingo – The teacher reads out a word slowly, for example “sss-nnn-aaa-p”, and the students must find the corresponding word.
3. Rhyming bingo – The teacher reads out a word, and students need to find the word that rhymes with it.
4. Silent E bingo – The teacher reads out a word like “pin” and asks what what word you would get by adding an E.
It should also be remembered that phonics is not a complete solution to learning reading. Students must also learn to recognize some common words which can not be sounded out (the most common list of such words is known as Dolch Sight Words). Many teachers also emphasize learning to sight read other common words (such as “is” or “it”) as this can improve reading fluency. Therefore as well as playing phonics bingo, you can also play sight word bingo in class.
By: Sunil Tanna
Educational bingo is increasingly popular as a classroom activity as more and more teachers are realizing that the game can easily be adapted to a variety of different lesson plans. Apart from the simple fact that students of all ages can enjoy the game, there are many other reasons by bingo is growing in popularity, not least the fact that it’s very inexpensive to play (important given the constraints that today’s teachers work under), but also the facts that game play mechanics can be modified to teaching pretty much any subject to any age range of students.
Bingo can play a role in teaching many different subjects, including math (the squares on bingo cards can be printed with math problems for which students must write in the answers rather than simply marking off squares), telling the time, geography, history, science, foreign languages, and yes, reading. In fact, bingo particularly excels in reading classes, and it is here that the game is most commonly encountered in schools.
In reading bingo, the game is played using the same basic game play mechanics as traditional bingo – the player’s (student’s) objective is to find a line of five matching items vertically, horizontally or diagonally as the items are announced by the bingo caller (teacher), however the bingo cards are printed with words instead of the usual numbers. These words can be sight words (words that students must learn to immediately recognize in order to achieve reading fluency), words that students are in the process of practicing this week, or they can be chosen specially in order to practice a variety of phonics games. Some examples of phonics games, include the teacher asking students to find rhymes, find a longer word that contains a shorter word or sound, find a word that the teacher reads out slowly (e.g. “fff-lll-aaa-p”) so that students must practice “blending” letters, and so on.
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
