How do you define a good teacher? You define a good teacher by the way she engages her class through innovative, interesting and fun educational activities. Bingo is one such activity than is gaining tremendous popularity. The reasons for this are quite obvious. Bingo is an interesting, challenging and an easy game to learn and play.
It can be played by students of any age group. It can be modified to suit any type of lesson and subject. All this can be done without the requirement of any expensive or specialist material. In a way it is the most ideal game to impart practical and innovative education to students from schools, colleges and various educational institutions.
The main difference between the traditional bingo and this form of bingo i.e. mathematical bingo is the pattern or style of bingo cards used. This form of bingo is mostly played as an educational game. Usually in traditional form of bingo cards with 5×5 numbers grid is used. Whereas in educational forms of bingo the items on the grid are related to that particular subject and lesson like names of animals, countries etc. and this gives us endless possibilities.
Here in fraction bingo numbers are used in a unique pattern to stimulate the child’s brain. So bingo has naturally become a favorite among math teachers especially though it can be used across a variety of subjects and lessons. One variant of the game involves writing down the answers to questions in the box instead of just writing it down or choosing an option, other variants of fraction bingo are also there. The main aim is to mark the number which matches the answer of the question called by the teacher.
Bingo can be used for various kinds’ math lessons. There is no limit to its applications. It is a safe bet to state that basic arithmetic and especially multiplication and multiplication tables can be best thought through bingo. Bingo is used for other math lessons as well i.e. fractions and decimals. This form may require students to change or convert between various representations of the same number (e.g. marking any of 1/2, 2/4, 3/6, 4/8, or 0.5, when the teacher says “a half”).
To play such forms of bingo i.e. fraction or any other version of bingo mainly educational need special sized cards to be allocated for this purpose alone. A few years back getting customized cards to suit your exact requirement done meant a lot of slogging as the resources were not available as easily as they are available now. The only option back then was to go to a publisher who specializes in bingo cards and getting them done. This quite often proved to be highly expensive. Things have changed today cards can be created easily and printed in your own computer by just downloading some bingo card creator software and you and you are in business whenever and wherever you want by just clicking your mouse away.
Tags: bingo, fraction bingo
