Spanish Bingo

Many of us think of bingo as a game mostlycards, and then the game of bingo is played, with
played as a social activity. However, modifiedthe teacher acting as the bingo caller. However
versions of the game are also being used in manythere is also one important change to the game
school and educational environments. Teachersplay: if the bingo cards contain Spanish words, the
and educators have found that because bingo isteacher makes the bingo calls in English, and if the
such a simple game, it is also very flexible, andbingo cards contain English words, the teacher
thus can be easily modified to be used ascalls in Spanish.
teaching tool for a variety of subjects, includingOf course, a key requirement in order to play this
reading, English, math, and learning languages suchgame is for teachers to be able to provide every
as Spanish.member of their class with a bingo card containing
The principle use of bingo in classes for foreignthat lesson's chosen words. Obviously it would not
languages is to help learn and practice vocabulary.be a good use of class preparation time for
Bingo provides an enjoyable method that forteacher's to spend ages writing out these cards
students to rehearse English to Spanish andby hand before every class, so a better method
Spanish to English translations of words chosen byof making the Spanish bingo cards is needed. The
the teacher. This is done using bingo cards,answer is to use a computer and some bingo
specially prepared in advance of class by thecard maker software - the teacher simply enters
teacher, containing the teacher's chosen wordsthe list of their chosen words into this software,
(instead of the usual bingo cards containingand it can generate and print the cards
numbers). The words can be in English or inautomatically.
Spanish. Each student is given one of these bingo