Most people are familiar with the game of bingo. Many of us probably think of it as a child’s game, or perhaps as a game played by older people at social events. However what many people are not aware of is that variations on the game of bingo have proven useful in an educational environment, and many teachers have found ways to make use of the game in their classrooms.
To recap the idea of the game that each player is given a card containing a grid of squares, and each square traditional contains a number. The umpire or bingo caller then calls out the number in a random order, and players have to check squares off their cards as the corresponding numbers are called out. The goal of the game is to be the first player to shout “Bingo!” or “House!” on achieving a win number of checked off squares (the winning criteria can be varied and need to be agreed before starting to play – typically, achieving a line or lines of consecutive checked off items is the criteria).
When using the game in the classroom, the game mechanics are, broadly speaking, unchanged (the teacher acts as the bingo caller, and the students are the players). However, what is changed is the items on the cards. Instead of using the bingo cards simply with numbers, they can be printed with words, phrases, mathematical puzzles or even musical symbols. The teacher can also vary the game play by instead of calling out the items on the cards, calling out clues that lead to the items – for example, in a French class, the teacher might call out words in English, and students have to find the corresponding French word printed on their bingo card.
Of course, applying bingo in a classroom in this way will require special bingo cards containing items of the teachers choice. This might sound daunting to any teachers considering the idea – preparing a lot of bingo cards by hand, or even with a word processor, could be a lot of work. Fortunately there is an easy solution – specialist bingo card software that can be used to print the cards – simply enter a list of items to appear on the cards, and the software can print as many bingo cards as you want.
By: Sunil Tanna
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
