Another New to Me Tool in 2022

Happy Christmas Eve!  I've been out of school for a week and thanks to the bitterly cold weather, it's been a pretty quiet week around our house.  We got out a bit on Wednesday to wrap up our shopping and to have dinner with my siblings, but we've been inside since the bitter cold hit on Thursday.  As a result, I've been spending time catching up on blogs and looking for resources to use in the new year.

One of the resources I've revisited during this break was a PD session I went to this summer on Engagement Strategies for the Secondary Classroom by Rebecka Peterson.  As I shared a few posts ago, my Professional Learning Focus (PLF) this year was on having an active and engaging classroom, so what a perfect fit!

During the session, Rebecka shared about how she uses games in the classroom (see a post here about Connect 4, another with Chutes and Ladders, and yet another about spinners).  She gave us links to online ready-to-use templates that could be used with any worksheet and links to some blog posts with other game ideas.  While I haven't used most of things Rebecka shared in the session, there is one I tried this semester.... Bingo Baker!

To be honest, I've taught math for 25 years and never really used Bingo as a review game - until now!  

Bingo Baker (bingobaker.com) is a free, easy to use bingo card maker.  One of the coolest features is that you can add images to your card / questions!  You can create a 3x3, 4x4, or 5x5 Bingo Card by selecting the drop down at the top right corner of the blank card.  

To create your card, click in one of the boxes and the little sidebar comes up.  Here is where you can add an image and change the alignment or color of your answer.  If you want to add a custom question, click on the rotate button at the bottom of the sidebar so that the question and answer are associated.  You can add as many questions / answers as you want - there's an area below the card for additional problems to be added.

Once you've made your cards, you'll save your set.  You can set it to be public, hidden, or private.  

The Bingo Baker at the right is for practicing the Pythagorean Theorem.  At the top, you can set how many cards you want to generate or you can play online if you are in a 1:1 school.  When printing, you can choose to print 1, 2, or 4 cards to a page.  At the bottom right is the call screen.  I just did "Full Screen" and showed the problems on the projector, then clicked each problem to turn it over for the "answer" for students to check their work.  When I played with my classes, I hit "Scramble" each hour so they wouldn't have the problems in the same order.

If you don't have time to make your own game, you can also search through the cards that have already been made - I saw games for trig, calculus, vocabulary, etc.

All in all, I was really pleased with how well the website worked and at the end of each hour, students would BEG for one more question because they were trying to get a bingo and a chance to grab a toy out of the goodie box!

What are some of your go-to games in the classroom?