Bingo: A Fun Teaching Alternative
So you're a dedicated teacher, and you want to teach the best way you can, but you're in a rut. Pupils are falling asleep at their desks because the lesson is just to boring or perhaps, its something they've encountered it dozens of times already. What do you do?
Undoubtedly there are a lot of teaching materials out there that can pique the interest of even the most disinterested student, and even if your kids have the attention spans of yesterday's meatloaf, with the right teaching aid they'll be learning in no time.
Bingo is known as a game played in churches on Saturday nights, most people think that its only played by the older set. Actually, bingo is played by almost everybody and it has long since made the jump from casinos and church bingo halls to the classroom.
You heard it right. Bingo has long been used by teachers as a cool teaching tool to keep the boring hours at bay and kids love to play its many variations. Bingo is naturally a very fun game, and no wonder. Adults and kids alike have grown addicted to the thrill that comes with shouting that Bingo, and you can use that to your advantage. Pretty soon your students will be begging you for another round of word bingo, and the mathematically-inclined will surely be wanting to play as many rounds of math bingo as they can.
So what exactly are the variations of bingo that are there to use as teaching aids? Tons! Here are the most popular variations used by teachers all over the world to give an interesting twist to their students' learning experience.
Math Bingo You can use the game to teach simple addition or subtraction, multiplication or division using a variety of bingo cards of different designs and colors. You can use simple math problems and have pupils cross off the right answer on their cards. The first one who has all the numbers crossed-off wins!
Word Bingo In word bingo you can use words instead of numbers, and you can call out the definition of the word. The students then will have to search that word on their cards and cross that word off. The first one to have all the words crossed-off wins! Other variations would be crossing off higher or lower case letters according to the letter that you call out.
Time Bingo These bingo cards have images of clock with different times on them. You call out a time, and the pupils have to look for that time among the clock images on the cards and cross that drawing off. The one who crosses all the images first wins!
These are but some of the basic variations of bingo for the classroom. It is up to you to modify the game to fit your class' needs. This is one lesson plan you wont have a hard time making!