Tag Archives: bingo

A Vocabulary Bingo Game with a Touch of Tech

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Honestly,  not sure if there is anything more fun than turning a classic bingo into a language bingo. Ok, ok, rereading the sentence it is fair to question my fun scale. But I can assure you that it is going to keep your students engaged. That much I can promise.

Playing bingo in my classes is a classic. Not only the usual grid with numbers. The grid can contain pretty much everything and be used to revise almost all skills.

But today, it is going to be a vocabulary bingo with a touch of tech

This activity has two steps:

  1. Building the Word Cloud ( traditionally on the board or, in my case, using the free app Wooclap) https://www.wooclap.com/
  2. Playing Bingo
STEP 1.  Building the wordcloud.

This is a retrieval practice activity where students, using their mobile phones, revise vocabulary taught in previous lessons. In my case, I am teaching The Media and we played bingo with vocabulary from the newspapers and the media.

How to set the activity on Wooclap. Very easy!

  1. Go to Wooclap and register.
  2. Click on Create new event.
  3. Choose WordCloud and click Start Now.
  4. Share the link, the code or the QR Code with your students and Bob’s your uncle.

This video might help you follow these steps

Once the wordcloud is built, revise again pronunciation, form and meaning

And just because I like to play with tools, I have designed my own word cloud on a different tool just because I like the way words are highlighted. Click on the image to see it in action.

Step 2. Playing Bingo

Here we go!!!

One. Have students draw a grid on their notebooks: 3×2 ( 6 words) will work just fine. There should be significantly more words than squares in the bingo card. Ask them to choose any six words from the cloud and fill in the bingo squares.

The idea is to randomly give definitions for the words in the cloud. As students match definitions and words in their bingo, they cross them off. Bingo is shouted when all the squares have been crossed.

Note: Although you might think that everyone knows how to play bingo, trust me when I say several of my students had no idea how to play. So, explain that their goal is to cross all the squares in their grid before anyone else.

Two. How to play

This can be done in two different ways. One requires no preparation, the other one requires a little preparation. If you know me, I am sure you have guessed the one that I favour.

No preparation: randomly define the words in the cloud. I’d suggest keeping a record of the ones you have already done so as not to repeat the same definition twice. It can happen. Trust me.

Preparation: More fun. More drama. More everything.

  1. Write the words in the cloud on small strips of paper.
  2. Search your house for a  suitable bag and put the strips of paper in it. Draw a strip of paper at a time and give a definition for the word. You might need to repeat the definition twice. As students listen to the definition, they have a look at their grids. If they have a word matching the definition, they cross it off. The game continues until someone shouts bingo.
  3. Don’t forget to build suspense. It adds to the game.

A simple but very effective game.

Follow-up: 

  1. Ask a question or several and give students a strip of paper or several. When answering the question, they should try to use the word(s) on their strips.

How do you get the news in your country? Has the way of keeping up to date changed over the years?

Repeat procedure with as many questions as you want students to answer. Ask them to swap their words so that they get new ones.

2. In the next class, I am planning to play bingo again. Same steps but with a twist. This time, the students will draw the slips of paper from the bag and they will be asked to provide the definition.

Inspired by Serena’s blog choice of words.  Here you can revise taking her quiz.

 

 

 

Spice Up your Class and Maximize Learning with Traditional Games

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What’s the first thing that pops into your head when I say traditional games? Bingos, crosswords, board games? This website has them all. Free. Customizable. Yay!

Let me start by saying that tomorrow is Monday. Monday, and January. Not my fave month, to be honest. I know it has always been there, in between December and February but I find January dull, boring, lifeless and one of the darkest months of the year.  If I were talking about food in this blog, I would say a Monday in January requires comfort food. But this blog is not about yummy recipes, it’s about ideas, ramblings, tools, teaching and learning. So, let’s talk not about comfort food but about comfort digital tools. Tools that can make a Monday feel like a Friday.  Is it possible? It is!! Just have a look at this website.  It has all the right ingredients:

  • It’s free and fun
  • Membership is free but you do not have to register unless you want to save content.
  • You can download the content you create.
  • It has lots of different fun templates you can edit to create exercises relevant for your classes.

It is called Half a Crossword, but don’t let the name deceive you. It is much more than a web to create crosswords. You can create a variety of games but what is most valuable for me are the ideas it provides to make the exercises come alive.

What kind of materials can you create?

  • Half a crossword
  • Sentence correction
  • Sentence Unscramble
  • Number Bingo
  • Board Game
  • Word Bingo
  • and some more….

HOW TO CREATE AN ACTIVITY

  • Choose the activity you would like to create
  • There are 3 steps you will need to follow
  • Number 1. Depending on the activity, enter the word, sentence or question in the space provided.
  • Number 2. Have a look at the maximum of words or characters…etc specified for each activity
  • Number 3. Preview it and print it. You can also save it if you have registered
  • Have a look at the label named HOW, where you can read how to use the activity with your students

Let’s kick off this week with, for example, half a crossword to revise the vocabulary taught the previous week. How does it sound to you?

Human Bingo to Revise Irregular Verbs

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I got this wonderful idea from Mel Wawen although I have slightly modified it. As she explains, it can be used as a warm up before the lesson or at the end of it when students feel they have had enough of English,

This time I needed to revise Irregular Verbs and this is how I did it.

  • I asked students to tidily sit individually and in rows of three or four.
  • Then, I asked each of them to choose an irregular verb from the ones we had studied. I told them to write it down in its irregular past form on a piece of paper.
  • Every row is a team, so they should make sure every student in the same team has chosen a different irregular verb.
  • Tell them you are going to say a verb at a time, using the infinitive form. When the students hear the infinitive for the irregular they have chosen, they must say the irregular past form aloud and then sit down.
  • The first team with all the students sitting down wins the game.

Follow up:

I used this game when they first learned there was something called irregular verbs. It was funny and it only took about three or four minutes.

The second time I played this human bingo, students also had to write a sentence containing the irregular verb. After checking that their sentence was grammatically correct, I made sure they knew how to pronounce in wors in their sentences.

It was their turn now. They had to stand up and read aloud their sentence but without saying the verb. Students in the class had to provide the right verb in the past to fill in the gap.

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