I've posted a couple times about this one difficult mixed-level class I have. I tried something today that kinda worked:
I made bingo cards for them to play during the powerpoint. They marked off words on their cards as the words came up in the powerpoint or if I wrote them on the board. My goals:
- For it to serve as a word bank, so when asked them to identify a picture, they wouldn't just sit there with blank faces.
- To keep them paying attention, as I wouldn't slow down for them to check their cards for the words.
- Note paper
- To keep them awake
- To give them something to focus on isntead of each other
It worked for the most part. They've played bingo before, so it didn't require much explanation. And it accomplished that I hadn't expected: the first winner was one of the quieter girls--someone who normally wouldn't volunteer. I try to not overlook any of my students, but when dealing with the rowdy kids, the quiet kids frequently fall through the cracks. So I was happy that someone different got some attention.
I used this website to make 5x5 cards:
http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/materials/bingo/. It took a little bit of work, as you can only enter 25 words at a time (or 24 and a free space). I entered my first 25 words, shuffle and generate 3 cards, then change out some of the words and shuffle/generate 3 more cards. It's a very basic card, though--no column headers or pictures or anything. And to print, you have to copy and paste it into Word or another such program. But once it's in Word, you can manipulate font, text size, table size, etc.
You can find several other bingo card makers through Google, but I like this one the best. There's another website,
http://print-bingo.com/, that has many more options, but you have to pay for premium access. Teach-nology is more basic, but there is no limit on how many times you can shuffle the words or how many cards you can generate.
