Breaking the Ice of Monotony with Bingo
Today, bingo is not only played in the backyard or at any social hall merely just to while away the time or for some leisure gatherings. Now teachers and some sectors adopts the game of bingo with special purpose and objectives in playing the game. The teaching sector make some variations of bingo to suit to their classroom requirements and that is for teaching strategies on their students.
Teachers who are teaching the language and reading courses, including phonics practice and sign words, uses the bingo cards as one of their teaching materials. Some of the subjects which bingo is used are Math, Foreign Languages, History, Geography, Science and English as Second Language(ESL).
The bingo cards that are being used in such teaching lessons are quite different from the regular bingo cards, as these cards were printed with words phrases or pictures of the subject the game of bingo is intended for. There are already some available bingo card makers with the aid of the computer software that enables teachers to have their cards preparation with ease and comfort, rather than doing their bingo cards manually. Plus the fact that they are able to save time.
Another type of bingo that is being adopted by creative teachers is the "icebreaker bingo". The "ice breaker bingo " is being played with the purpose of facilitating new students at the start of the class to get to know each other more.
In the ice breaker bingo, the students gets their own bingo card. Each bingo card contains the name of the student or some sort of general descriptions such as "own a cat", or "has been skating", these are for the younger version of the class. For the older version of ice breaker bingo, such description as "has been Skiing" or "plays guitar" , etc. is used. The objective of the game here is of course to get five squares in straight line being marked off in their bingo cards. The straight lines can be formed in horizontal, vertical or diagonal positions in the bingo card.
If the student's names are used, the teacher moves from one student to another tapping their shoulders one by one.. The student then stands up and tells some thing about himself, and finally reveals his name. The players then can mark off on their cards such name. However, winners can only be declared such if he will be able to recognized all the students who owns the names in his winning card.
So we see how the ice breaker bingo works with the teaching system and serving with a definite purpose other than pure recreation. You may adopt your version of ice breaker bingo in one of your social gatherings or seminars and other social activities.
