As with any game bingo too has its own set of terms that are commonly used. In this article I will attempt to familiarize you with the common bingo terms you are inevitably going to encounter.
One player: When a player is one number away from winning.
Bingo board: This is the board that displays a random set of numbers, instead of the numbers being called out. This board is usually very large so everyone playing the game can easily view it.
Buy in and minimum buy in: The minimum number of cards that qualify you as a player of the game. The buy in varies with each game. Minimum buy-in is the least amount of money that you will need to spend if you want to enter the game and be counted among one of the contenders for the prize up for grabs.
Caller: This person is an important part of the game however he or she does not play the game. The caller is a person that calls out the numbers as the numbered are drawn.
Coverall: This type of bingo game requires that all the numbers on the bingo card be covered in order to win. This type of bingo is not commonly played.
Dauber: In order to mark the numbers on the bingo card easily a pen with a thick foam tip is used. This pen is called a dauber and is thick enough to mark the whole number easily.
Bingo booklet: This bingo booklet has a number of sheets depending on the game. Each sheet is a different color. These sheets are organized in sequence in which the game will be played.
Six-pack and nine-pack: The number of numbers on a bingo card during a specific game.
Wrap up: This usually means the end of a game. Bingo is played at many times of the day and for each time there is a specific name for example: moonlight bingo which commences with the moon is seen. And the early bird game that starts very early in the morning.
Bingo terminology is fairly easy to pickup as with any other game in bingo you will have to utilize these terms in order to be a respected player. A learner you might forget or substitute the term for another word. But that’s ok as long as you have fun and make lots of friends in the process.
By: Andrew Fullard
Many teachers are looking for interesting ways to spice up their classes. The idea is that by making learning fun, students will pay more attention, progress faster, take in more initial, and recall more later – and many teacher’s experience suggests that this is indeed the case. One such idea is being used in many classrooms in introducing the game of bingo, since it is very easy to learn, and doesn’t require expensive materials. Indeed, bingo is now being used to help teach a wide variety of different school subjects, including not only math, but also English, reading, foreign languages, and even science, history and geography.
The simplest version of bingo for math classes is to play using bingo cards containing numbers chosen by the teacher. Each student is given one such card and told to mark off a square if it contains an answer to a math problem posed by the teacher. The teacher then calls out a series of math problems, and the students have to figure out the answers in order to play the game. This type of bingo can be used for practising addition, subtraction, multiplication (especially “times tables”), and division. It can also used for practising fractions and decimals as well as rounding – in this case, the teacher may call out something like “one fifth” and student be required to find the square containing “0.2″, or the teacher might call out “14.7 rounded to the nearest whole number”.
Another way to play math bingo is to use bingo cards with math problems. In this case, the teacher calls out the problem (or writes it on the board), and the students must find the matching problem on their card, solve it, and write in the correct answer. When everybody is ready, those students who figured out the correct answer, can mark off the corresponding square – those who didn’t, can’t.
In either case, the key requirements to play these games in class are of course the bingo cards containing the items that the teacher wants to use for that class. Obviously, preparing a set of bingo cards by hand for each student would be quite time consuming and a waste of the teacher’s class preparation time – so the best method to make the bingo cards is to use a computer and some bingo card maker software – that way the cards can be printed with very little time and effort.
By: Sunil Tanna
