How to Play Bingo With Your Class
The Rules
Bingo is a game of chance. One gets to be the caller; all others are players.
The caller
The caller is the person who reads out the vocabulary, numbers or pictures from the call sheet. In our case this role is usually covered by the teacher or tutor, but in classes with fewer students you might as well include all players to take on this task together.
The players
All players get a bingo card with their individual vocabulary. These can simply be dealt out, but if you have the time, let each player choose one from the stack themselves. This way your students make their own choice and you can avoid complaints from those who lost after the game has ended. Playing with multiple bingo cards per player is possible, as well. It makes the game trickier, since there’s more vocabulary to keep track of, but also more exciting, since players have more chances to win.
Calling words
If there is a free space on the cards, let players tick it off at the beginning of the game. Then, continue with calling the vocabulary from the call sheet.
To do so, we suggest using one or more dice as this way of playing doesn’t require much preparation and therefore saves you a lot of time. To select a word roll the dice and count down the call sheet up to the sum of the numbers rolled. After the next roll start counting from the current word and so on. Once you reach the end of the call sheet continue counting from the top while leaving out words which have already been called. Another option is to use a bowl, bucket or shoebox, and place the cut-out words folded inside to draw from.
To give your game a more event like character, a real “Bingo Hopper” is a great accessory. If you want to spare the expense though, a large water container and some ping pong balls are a fun alternative. The water container’s neck has to be big enough for ping pong balls to fit through. Then, assign a number to each word on the call sheet and fill the bottle with as many labeled ping pong balls as there are words. Shake it, pull out a ball and call out the corresponding word.
Repeat the respective word numerous times before explaining, translating or writing it down on the board. You can also describe the picture and let the players guess the word. Remember to mark all words on your call sheet so you don’t call them twice and can double-check them when a “Bingo” occurs.
Marking words
Wait for your players to mark a match on their card. If this is a one-time game or you are playing with a class the first couple of times, let them draw directly on the card with pencils or crayons. If you want to reuse your cards and your players already know Bingo, let them place gaming chips, coins, building bricks, or other game tokens that fit within the squares on their card.
Bingo
To win the game a player needs to cover all squares in a horizontal, vertical or diagonal row. Let your players shout “BINGO” out loud to let everyone know. It may happen that multiple players win and yell “BINGO” after the same call-out. In that case, let both players win!
A step further
Once you and your students got accustomed to the basic rules, you might want to explore more you can do with your bingo cards.
