Bingo Trivia

ESL/EFL Game Profile
Name of Game:
Bingo Trivia
Target Students:
Young Learners
Target Students:
Elementary School
Target Students:
Middle School
Target Students:
High School
Duration:
20-25 minutes
Number of Students:
At least 6
English Skills:
Listening
English Skills:
Speaking
Objective:
Review class material by playing bingo style trivia
Instructions
  1. Draw a bingo grid on a piece of paper
  2. Fill the squares with 'W', 'Q', '+s', and '-s'
  3. Draw the same grid on the board without the letters
  4. Divide students into groups and decide which team goes first
  5. One team decides how many points they want to use and chooses a square on the board
  6. 'W'= give them a word to spell
  7. 'Q'= question from the lesson's story
  8. '+s'= automatically get the amount of points they bet
  9. '-s'= automatically lose the amount of points they bet
  10. Team with the most points wins
Variations
  • Use different categories for 'W' and 'Q'
  • Use more than 2 categories
  • Make up new categories, such as toungue twisters (thanks Jaine!)
  • For large classes, have one person in each group be the leader and give them a complete grid with questions
  • Have students come up with their own questions and ask each other
  • If a team can't answer correctly, give the questioning team a chance
Notes

Use eeny-meeny-miney-moe to see who goes first and teach it to the kids to use when they play in small groups.

 

A big thanks to Troy for this EFL/ESL game and to Jaine for the variations!

more info

I am not familar with bingo, could you please give a little more info for the instructions, do teams take turns to answer questions, how do they bet, do they have an amount of points to start with, do they just bet any random number..., surely then they will bet large when they are sure of an answer and bet small when they don't..... are all the squares covered with those letters, how do they pick a square, once a square is picked cannot it not be picked by another team, do they have to pick two squares a W or Q and a -S or +S, why would students ever pick -S.  Sorry to be dumb but this game sounds interesting but I don't quite see how it works.

English Bingo Trivia

Draw a square with five rows and five columns on a piece of paper and fill in each square with 'W', 'Q', '+s', and '-s'. Keep this paper with you and don't show it to the students.

Draw a square with five rows and five columns on the board but leave them empty. This way, students do not know what each square has.

Write A, B, C, D, E, and F above the boxes on the top.

Write 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 next to boxes on the left side.

Now each box has a coordinate, such as A4, or D2.

Select a team to go first.

The first team will say, "We choose box C5 and we want to use 10 points." Each team begins with zero points and you can decide the maximum number of points teams can choose.

Check C5 on your paper and see whether it says 'W', 'Q', '+s', or '-s'.

If it has a 'W', give them a vocabulary word to spell. If they spell it right, they get the amount of points they used. If they get it wrong, they lose the amount of points they used. Either way, it becomes the next team's turn.

If it has a 'Q', give them a question from the lesson they are studying. If they answer it right, they get the amount of points they used. If they get it wrong, they lose the amount of points they used. Either way, it becomes the next team's turn.

If it has a 's', they automatically get the amount of points they used and it becomes the next team's turn.

If is has a '-s', they automatically lose the amount of points they used and it become the next team's turn.

Once a square is picked, put an X in it. It can no longer be selected by other teams.

This example uses a 5x5 grid but you can make it as big as you want. Does this make more sense?

thanks!

Thanks for taking the time to explain it to me, that makes much more sense to me now.  Sounds like a great game and I will try it in English club.  Cheers =)

tried it out

thanks it was a fun game. I made a couple of adjustments to suit the students I had.  I had a T category = tongue twister, if a team picked a T then all teams had one minute to rehearse a tongue twister and then were timed and the fastest and clearest team won the points.  I also made the Q catergory open to all teams, first team to give me a correct answer won the points.  Sometimes there was more than one correct answer and multiple teams won the points.  This was to keep the students interested during another teams turn.

Cheers

ESL Bingo Trivia

Great idea for adjustments and I added them to the variations box!