Classroom bingo

Bingo earns its place in a classroom because it is one of the few games where every child is engaged on every turn. There is no waiting for your go — a call is a call for everyone at once, which is why it holds a room of thirty better than most activities that need no equipment.

The ready-made sets here use everyday classroom vocabulary and come in sizes for a small group, half a class, and a full thirty. There is also a 3 × 3 set for younger children or for a round that has to fit into the ten minutes before lunch.

The real use, though, is as a shell for whatever you are teaching. Any list of terms works: the parts of a plant, key dates, French numbers, the vocabulary before a unit test. Calling the definition instead of the word turns it from a reading game into a comprehension one without changing the cards at all.

Around thirty to forty words gives genuinely varied cards for a class that size. With exactly 24 every card holds the same words in a different order, which still plays fine but ends more predictably.