Educational Bingo for Teachers
Most teachers are always looking for challenging and engaging things for their students to do in class. Activities that encourage participation in class discussions are always especially welcome. Ideally, classroom activities will also be fun, which is why games are popular, although of course we must never forget that the purpose behind all these activities is to encourage and assist learning.
However, being interesting and educational is not enough by itself. An activity must also be suitable to accommodate different lesson plans, different ages of students, and of course, different school subjects. Furthermore, in today’s educational environment, cost considerations must necessarily play a separate role: teachers cannot and do not want to spend money on expensive materials that can only be used rarely, or even only once.
One idea worth considering is bingo. The basic idea is to play the game using specially prepared bingo cards containing items related to the theme. For example, in a chemistry class you might use the names of elements, compounds, or chemical processes. In a math class, you might use math problems. In a geography class, you might use the names of countries, states, provinces, cities, rivers, or mountains. And in a foreign language class, you could play bingo using words from the French, German, or Spanish vocabulary that students are learning.
The beauty of bingo is that you can adapt the game to almost any subject or age range of students. Also, you can play the game in a variety of different ways: you can play a “normal” game with the teacher as the caller, you can have the teacher say “clues” instead of the items on the cards, you can ask students to explain the items as they mark them off their bingo cards, or you could even have class discussions during the game after each item is called.
Bingo is also compatible with the cost constraints that today’s teachers must work with: you can simply print the bingo cards from your computer instead of sending them in for expensive supplies. There are two main ways to do this: you can download free ready-to-use bingo educational printables from the internet (available in a variety of themes), or you can purchase inexpensive bingo card printing software (which will allow you to print bingo cards). on any topic, whenever you want). Plus, if you find yourself playing bingo regularly, you can even save on your printing costs: just print once on good quality paper or cardboard, use the school’s laminator on these, and when you play in class, students can put chips on the squares of the bingo cards instead of writing on them.