5 Minute activities - Vocab Bingo

 

5 minute activities

What are 5 minute activities?

I like to call them as 5 minute activities as they take not more than 5 minutes. They are small, fast, interesting and exciting to get your students’ attention and focus instantly. 

The 5 minute activities come in all varieties with endless tasks. These 5 minutes will make your students ask for more. 

These can be done in the beginning or the end of the class. They can be used to pep up sagging interest. 

Any topic can be introduced and revised, any concept revisited and strengthened. 

5 minute activities can be done as individual, pair or group work. 

Seize those 5 minutes of your class to make the most of every class.

VOCAB BINGO

Using Bingo as a 5 minute activity is a very interesting and creative way to teach useful vocabulary.

Tambola, or Housie is a popular game in India. It is known as Bingo in the United States of America and is played slightly differently. All of us have played Tambola at social gatherings and parties. The game is fun to play and easy to learn.

This well-known and interesting game is often used in English classrooms to enhance vocabulary.

This post is about how to use this wonderful game as a 5 minute activity to teach the following dozen useful adjectives. 

 

1.     How to play this 5 minute activity – VOCAB BINGO 

step 1: 

Students will create their own bingo cards by drawing 3x4 grid as we have 12 adjectives. (This can be given as home task so that students come prepared with the Bingo sheet).The grid will be filled with the given 12 adjectives.

step : 2 

Then the teacher can choose the adjectives one by one and gives the clue - meaning of the adjective and the students cross out the adjective that they think is the right answer.

 2.     How to play this 5 minute activity – VOCAB BINGO

step 1 : 

Students may be asked to create their own bingo cards by drawing 3x4 grid as we have 12 adjectives. (This can be given as home task so that students come prepared with the Bingo sheet).The grid will be filled with the given 12 adjectives.

step 2 : 

Teacher then can choose the adjectives one by one and gives the clue – synonym / antonym of the adjective and the students cross out the adjective that they think is the right answer.

Winners may be

     the first to complete 4 corner adjectives correctly

the first to complete individual rows correctly

the first to complete the entire dozen correctly.

Prizes for winners depend on the teacher’s discretion

Follow up activity 1 to this 5 minute Vocab Bingo activity -

Teachers may kick off another 5 minute activity as a follow up to this one by getting students to use these adjectives in sentences.

 Follow up activity 2 to this 5 minute Vocab Bingo activity -

Teachers may get a paragraph with blanks to be filled by students with appropriate adjectives from the 12.

Variations to this 5 minute Vocab Bingo activity –

• 12 /16 antonyms
• 12/16 synonyms
• 12/16 adverbs

*Note :

* Students may be asked to draw grids in their notebooks so that the Bingo sheet/card need not be printed.

* Teacher can fill the Bingo Grids with whatever vocabulary is being used blackboard/smart board and students can just copy them.

* When students consciously use the vocabulary learnt, they may be rewarded with smileys, stars, or anything else that they would enjoy showing off.

Download meanings of adjectives

Download blank Bingo sheet

Use images like these to award students

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.