Focus:
Accuracy (more controlled)
Activity Type:
Mingle
Materials:
Bingo cards (use this one as is or adapt/ create your own)
Preparation:
Print or copy enough bingo cards so that each student has one
Activity Procedure:
Give each student a bingo card. You may want to review the rules of bingo to make sure students are clear on this. Elicit what a “bingo” is and clarify that students can get a bingo by marking five squares in a row across, down, or diagonally. Make sure they know that once they get five squares in a row, they need to yell, ‘Bingo!”
Tell students that the squares on the bingo cards contain prompts that they need to change into questions to ask their classmates. As a demo, write one of the prompts on the board and elicit how to make it into a question. For example, write drinks coffee in the morning on the board and elicit from students how to make it into a direct question to ask a classmate: Do you drink coffee in the morning? Make sure students know they’ll need to rephrase each question as a prompt to ask their classmates. Elicit the possible responses to the questions (for example, Yes, I do or No, I don’t.)
Tell students they’ll need to walk around the room, asking different classmates different questions. When they find a classmate who says “yes” to one of the questions, they should write that classmate’s name in the appropriate square. That counts as one square toward a bingo. You’ll probably want to set a limit on how many questions the students can ask each classmate. A three-question limit is a good rule. This means that if students get a “no” answer to the first three questions they ask a classmate, they have to move on and ask someone else. As soon as they get a “yes” answer (within the first three questions), they can write down the classmate’s name and then have to move on to talk to someone else. This will ensure that students keep mingling and don’t fill out their entire bingo card just by talking to one person.
As students mingle, monitor to make sure they are doing the activity correctly and to help them where needed. You can also write down errors you hear to save for a delayed error correction stage after the activity.
Once a student gets a bingo, you can decide whether to end the activity or have the students continue for another round.
Activity Feedback:
After the activity, follow up by congratulating the bingo winner(s). Then nominate individual students to share something they learned about a classmate.
You then conduct a delayed error correction stage using the sentences with errors you collected while the students were mingling. Write the sentences on the board and elicit corrections from the students.
Activity Adaptation:
This activity can easily be adapted to practice other verb tenses, like the past simple or present perfect. Write prompts in the desired tense in each square. For example, you could write prompts in the simple past, such as:
had a pet as a child / was afraid of the dark / grew up in a city
or in the present perfect, such as:
has been to more than 10 countries / has read all the Harry Potter books / has never seen the Star Wars films
etc.