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Bingo is perfect to make a list of skills/facts/keywords to look out for in students’ practice – resilience, learning from mistakes etc. and it is fun! This is useful for practical skills as well as study skills. It’s a great activity for helping students identify and notice common elements from keywords in a piece of learning to behaviours in performance to anxieties around revision etc.
This is useful in all settings where noticing and naming are important. The purpose is to generate a list of key elements for a subject to be noticed.
Discuss the purpose of the activity and set the challenge. (You might want to run this like a Bingo hall with students shouting ‘house’ when
they have reached a certain goal.)
Make a list of elements to be spotted during the session.
Students mark down the element they spot (they may spot it more than once and this could be noted).
You can decide how and when to discuss their findings – this works as a solo, small group or whole-group activity. You may want to make one element the key one to be identified.
This could be used as a challenge at the start of a module where you name the elements to notice or it could be used as a revision tool, with the students generating the list. It is also a good TLA for analysing a performance or video of a talk/event.
In a performance class, you may wish to identify the key barriers/anxieties to performance that students are experiencing. Start with discussion and generate a list. Ask students to choose their top 6 and identify the key barrier for them. They then write their 6 barriers on the bingo sheet. In their performance feedback they are asked which behaviours they noticed and peers can also feedback on this. By actively naming and noticing barriers to performance they can then set goals on how to overcome them.
In an academic module with tricky words you may want to use this to jargon bust. You list the 6 keywords/phrases you want them to spot and display them. You then give them the knowledge learning and ask them to note down when they come across one of the elements. Afterwards, you can discuss the occurrence of these elements and how/why they are significant in certain contexts.
In a video analysis of an event taking place ask students to spot key places where the elements you mentioned are appropriate (these could be 6 elements of an event management plan).
With large groups, you can either run this as a solo activity and then put students into groups to discuss/adjust their decisions or you could have small-group discussions which contribute to a whole-group activity of generating one list.
Put a list of what you want noticing into Chat for students to identify. When a student notices one they note it down, plus the time. When they have a full house they shout Bingo.
Students will start noticing and referring to the elements you are challenging them to observe.
Once the elements are noticed the second challenge is to act upon them. Discussions and maybe quizzes where appropriate can help achieve this.
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