Teachers are always on the look out for fun, interesting and engaging classroom activities. Classroom games, obviously providing they have sufficient educational content are particularly welcome. This desire for interesting classroom activities extends to teachers of all subjects, including teachers of modern languages such as Italian.
One such activity that an increasing number of teachers are turning to is bingo. The reasons for this include the facts that bingo can easily be adapted to teaching different subjects, is very easy to learn and play, and that the game does not include any expensive or specialist materials.
There are many ways that bingo can be adapted to teaching Italian, here are a few possibilities:
1. You could play bingo using numbered cards (e.g. squares contain “5″, “34″ and “66″), but the teacher calls out numbers in Italian (e.g. “cinque”, “trenta quattro”, and “sessanta sei”). This type of game offers an excellent opportunity for students to practice their Italian numbers.
2. Instead of playing with cards containing numbers, you could play using cards containing times, dates, or letters of the alphabet. As with the previous type of game, you play Italian.
3. You could play with vocabulary. In this type of game you can use bingo cards either containing English or Italian words, but all calls are made in the other language.
In order to play these types of bingo there is really just one thing you need: bingo cards containing the appropriate item. At this point many teachers would probably start to worry about the cost of being specialist printed materials – however there is no need to worry – teachers can simply print the cards themselves using their computers. Teachers can download get ready-to-use free bingo printables from the Internet on a variety of topics, or alternatively can purchase affordable computer software for printing bingo cards which allows them to print cards containing any combination of items that they want in effectively unlimited quantities.
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
Although bingo tends to be mainly thought of as a leisure activity, it is also true that variations on the standard game are being used by many teachers. These teachers have introduced bingo in their classes as a way to helping children to engage with their studies, and are using the game to help teach many different subjects including English, foreign languages and mathematics. In reading classes in particular, bingo tends to be particular useful. Here a few ideas for reading lesson plans that involve classroom bingo:
* Phonemic Awareness Bingo – Each student is given a bingo card containing letters. The teacher reads out words, students must then identify the letter than begins the word and find the corresponding square on their cards.
* Sight Word Bingo – Each student is given a bingo card containing words (these, for example, might be words chosen from the Dolch Sight Word list). The teacher reads out a word aloud, and the students must find the matching word square on their cards.
* Rhyming Bingo – Each student is given a bingo card containing words chosen by the teacher (ones which the teacher knows rhymes for). The teacher says a word (for example, “small”) and students must find a rhyming word on their card (for example, “ball”).
* Vocabulary Bingo – Again the students are given bingo cards that contain words chosen in advance by their teacher. In this case, the teacher gives the definition of a word, and students must find the word being defined.
By: Sunil Tanna
