Let’s bingo again!

Manaswini Sridhar

As a student, how often did you sigh at the daunting sight of the seemingly never-ending list of dates, names of battles fought, names of the countries that fought in the battles, names of the victors and the chunk of territory they wrested from the vanquished? As a teacher, you also moan and groan when you correct the answer scripts of students who seem to have no patience whatsoever for either numbers or names, and because history is like mathematics in that manner, you fail the students with a long sigh.

True, students in middle school need to develop the patience to wade through dates and names in order to score a good grade. But for the teacher or the parent who would like to make the memorization fun, well, resort to Bingo. Help students realize it is a game, a game that actually determines their fate in the tests or the exams!

Take for example this worksheet on World War II from the following website: http://studenthandouts.com/01-Web-Pages/2014-04/world-war-ii-timeline-worksheet.html.

The worksheet lists the major events that took place from 1931 to 1945, and the task of the students is to match the event with the year. The few, diligent, hard-working students dive readily into such worksheets to test their knowledge of dates and names, but the majority of the less willing students choose the dates haphazardly, hoping that lady luck will favour them.

There are a wide variety of resources ‘out there’, so the student has access to information of every kind. In view of this, most teachers feel that they are redundant; however this is not true because the function of the teacher is now to also present or gift wrap the package available on the Internet in as appealing or acceptable a manner as possible.

So what creativity does the teacher resort to? Does the teacher create a bingo card like the following? Does she then read out the questions and have students number the answers as Q 1, Q 2, etc.? For example, does the teacher say: Question 1: Year in which Japan changes the name of Manchuria to Manchukuo and hope that students write 1 next to 1932? Does the teacher go through all the 15 questions and desperately pray that students become better listeners even if they may not correlate the date with the event?

This kind of testing would indeed be dreary and tedious both for the teacher and the student, and is essentially not much different from the worksheet that we have seen on the website. So how can we adapt it a little resourcefully so that students are not programmed to be just zombies, doing a task at hand mindlessly and with no drive?

Well, let’s take the same history worksheet and the same bingo card with the dates and try and transform it into something more stimulating and interesting. After all, that is what thrills most of our students, and even us, if we are candid enough to admit it.

The purpose of our activity is to be convinced as teachers that our students understand which event took place on what date. It is also essential that the students not think of the topic solely in terms of dates, but understand the chronology of the significant events that took place in the world during these 14 years. For most students, the format of a history test is: match the following, answer the following questions, or fill in the blanks. As a result, there is not much attempt on the part of the students to think about a period in history holistically.

So instead of reeling off the questions, why not have students frame the questions? Rather than ask students: When did the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor? and have students (hopefully) answer or circle 1941, let’s have individual students formulate questions based on the dates. Better still, divide the class into groups of five and have students (without the aid of their textbooks or notes) formulate questions about the Second World War, ascertaining that the answers correspond with the dates printed on the Bingo card. The answers can also be timed so that the teacher can complete the activity within the 40 or 45 minute period of the class.

In doing this activity, students learn to do the following:

1. They learn to work in groups, thus promoting cooperative learning.
2. Since the teacher times the activity, and there is an element of healthy competition involved, students do come prepared. This is a positive outcome of the game.
3. Students frame questions and thereby their language skills improve.

Here is how the teacher carries forward the activity.

1. The class gets divided into a minimum of 6 groups.
2. The maximum time given for the activity is 15 minutes. (1 minute per date or question).
3. Students formulate questions for the given dates. Teacher informs students that the questions have to be very specific and not general or vague. For example, students cannot ask a question like: What happened in the year 1935? Or Which battle took place in 1944? Instead, the questions should be specific: In which year did Hitler become the Chancellor of Germany? When did the Battle of the Bulge take place? The idea of the questioning is for the teacher to understand that the students have got their facts in place.
4. Groups raise their hands quietly when they complete the task so that the teacher can note the time taken by the group. Groups however must remember that once the time has been registered on the blackboard, they cannot scrutinize their questions any more. It is treated as final. Groups must also remember that they do not score any brownie points for having completed the task first if there are more than two mistakes in the formulation of their questions! This rule thwarts students from being hasty.
5. After the stipulated time of 15 minutes, the groups are ready to ask the questions.
6. The teacher selects any year of her choice and says to Group A: 1944. If group A responds with the correct question, then the group is given a point.
7. The group with the maximum correct questions is the winner. If the group with the maximum correct questions also happens to be the group that completed the set of questions first, then it is given additional points.

It can only be hoped that students also pay attention when other groups are asking questions so that they improve their own understanding of the event. The game can be played again, and this time more quickly since students have a fair idea of how to formulate the questions. If the teacher so desires, she can appoint one of the class leaders to take the students through the game again. She can monitor the class and remain in the background.

For those teachers who think it is extra work because they have to create the Bingo cards…well, ask your students to draw the Bingo boxes in their notebooks. Students will complete the task in 10 minutes. If the topic is announced two days in advance, students can prepare for it like a test…only better, because they will have to correlate both the question and the answer, instead of plain guessing!

The author is a teacher educator and language trainer based in Hyderabad. She can be reached at manaswinisridhar@gmail.com.