When kids are asked about the subject that they dislike the most, more often than not, the answer is, “Math!” It really doesn’t have to be that way. Kids tend to get bored quickly but they can really come to love math if it can be made fun for them. To introduce young learners to any math topic and keep them focused on the lesson, why not let them play bingo as a learning tool?

Bingo is a game that historically has been perfect to teach math to students at every grade level. Whether they are just learning addition and subtraction, or multiplication and division or even more complex concepts such as fractions, geometry and algebra, bingo has long been a fun and easy way to get kids to learn.

Teaching Tools

It’s possible to play bingo or find math bingo cards on a number of educational websites online. For younger students, ABCya Math Bingo offers math bingo at several grade levels and difficulties for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. As the math subjects get more complex over time and throughout their education, bingo games can also be adjusted to meet their needs. A site which specialises in math bingo, Learn With Math Games, offers bingo game cards that can be used for a number of games for classes of as many as 20 students.

Teachers can get the tools that they need for their students by going to Learn with Math to download or print the cards.

How to Play

1. You will need approximately 20 cards to start. Create a bingo card for each student player. These can be made ahead of time along with a key that has the answers to the equations you come up with on your own. The bingo cards can be created for the appropriate grade level. If you are making your own cards, be sure to keep the cards sufficiently random so that the play is fair among the students in the class.
2. At the beginning of the class period, give each student a bingo card and approximately twenty bingo tokens to cover up the correct answers that appear on their cards.  You can also have students divide up in teams and work together to solve the math problems. If calculators, scratch paper or pencils are needed, be sure to have enough for each student or team. Be sure to allow enough time for students to work out the answers.  You may use scraps of paper, beans, pennies or other similar items as bingo tokens.
3.  Make up a set of math problems for the students as well as an answer key. The correct answer to the equations will be on the cards, while the problem is called out or written on the board. All students in class work on the problems. However, there is only one right answer.  If a player doesn’t have the correct answer on their card for that problem, they don’t get to place a marker for that problem.
4. The game continues until a one student or a team is able to get five answers on their cards in a line that either goes vertically, horizontally or diagonally. The first person or team who gets a bingo is the winner. Answers should be checked to make sure that the marked answers correspond with what was called out.
5. It is possible to have multiple winners if you keep going even after the first bingo is called. In the case of blackout bingo, the first person or team with all of the squares on their card covered by tokens is the winner.

The difficulty of the math problems can be adjusted for various grade levels as their math aptitude increases. For those students who have difficulty with math, by pairing those students that do better in the subject, you can encourage both cooperation and better math comprehension.

Bingo is one of the best math teaching games available and both parents and teachers have seen how well students respond to learning math when it’s made into a fun game.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/jimmiehomeschoolmom/3365211952/