They can click again to make the X go away. As items get called that they have on their board, they simply click them, and a red X appears. Students access the game by clicking a link I have posted for them on Canvas, which automatically gives them a random card. I am not a fan of English to French translation, so if it’s not something I can act out or somehow define easily in French, I will typically not do Bingo for that set of vocabulary. If I am doing vocabulary I will act it out or somehow define it in French. The site will give you a PDF that you can print out as you call the game, but I project it on the SMART Board and cross items out after I call them. You can pay to get more card variations, but I don’t have classes larger than 30, so I don’t have a need for that. Then it automatically generates 30 virtual bingo cards (it’s possible that two students will get the same card unless you actually send each student an individual link, but that doesn’t really bother me). I like to do 4×4, because that is the traditional French Loto board.

My Free Bingo Cards lets you create your own Bingo cards using any words you want. I could not believe I hadn’t heard of this before! Of course this would have been great last year for hybrid and virtual instruction, but the fact is that it’s great even for in person instruction and also eliminates the need for sharing materials such as cards and chips. Conference chair Marissa Coulehan used it during our Zoom social hour as a fun way to get to know each other. This site was introduced to me over the summer at NYSAFLT‘s Summer Institute. Enter My Free Bingo Cards (who, by the way, did not pay me to write this post). You had to pass out cards and chips (and then collect the chips when you were done and inevitably pick several up off the floor), or have students create their own Bingo boards, so sometimes I passed it over for something that didn’t require so much set up time. Until recently, though, there wasn’t an easy way to get Bingo going without having to waste some class time getting set up. I turn to Bingo (or as we call it in French, Loto) from time to time to review vocabulary. Teachers have been using it for decades to review topics in a variety of subject areas. Bingo is an age old tradition in K-12 classrooms.

Classroom bingo board