These word lists can be useful both when teaching young children to read, and when teaching English as a Second Language (“ESL”). This is because they allow teachers to develop and deploy classroom exercises and activities to practice reading and recognizing these common but important words. However, there has one important difference: the bingo cards are printed with words chosen by the teacher, instead of numbers. The teacher then outcries words (rather than numbers), and the students’ task is to find the matching words on their cards.

Most people have played bingo at some point in their lives, but even those of us who have never played the game, generally do know how to play the game. Each player inclines one of these bingo cards, and the objective of the game is to check off a row, column or diagonal of squares (in some versions, the objective is to obtain multiple lines, another square, or even get all squares checked off). Squares on the cards are checked off by the players when the bingo caller (who also plays referee) cries out the corresponding number.

Bingo has undergone something of a renaissance in popularity in the last few years. Wedding and baby shower bingo is a popular activity on these social events. Versions of the game can be produced for almost any type of class including English (including K12 and ESL), math, science, history, geography or even religious studies. Game play may also be varied by the teacher, so for instance in math bingo, cards containing math problems possibly used and students must write in the answers to these problems instead of simply mark off the squares.