My Thai: BINGO!

One absolute I have learned while teaching is that all students love Bingo. As soon as I mention Bingo the classroom room erupts into screams and cheering and in some cases even celebratory dancing.

Today I rewarded my classes for their past few weeks of hard work with a well deserved day of bingo. I keep my call cards in a sticky rice container and as soon as my students catch sight of it they know exactly what is going to happen. Today I kept it hidden in my bag, along with the game cards, and after our warm up of "What day is today? What day is tomorrow? What day was yesterday? What is today's weather like?" I casually walked over to my desk and removed the sticky rice container from my bag....all the students screamed "BINGO!!!!! Len!! Len!! " (len means play in Thai). I passed out the cards and and the small cut up pieces of card board students use to mark their boards and we spent our class time in blissful bingo abandon.

I am always amazed at how magical this game is. It forces students to use both their listening and reading skills while also reinforcing spelling. As I walk around calling out the vocab words as I draw them from my sticky rice container I hear the students repeat them after me, spelling the words under their breath and helping their fellow classmates. Upon finding words on their boards there is often singing, clapping, a victory dance or a satisfied shout of joy.

Yet the most exciting moment is when one of the students eventually shouts "Teacher, Bingo!! ". The entire class seems to hold their breath as I check the victor's board, if their "bingo" passes my inspection I pull out the prize bag and the class collectively gasps in jealous astonishment at the luck of their classmate. I let the winner reach their hand in an pull out a prize and everyone "ohhs" and "ahhs". Then they shout "again, again! Teacher again!" Even my most mischievous and hard to control students sit in rapt attention and beg to play over and over again, sitting like little angels waiting for the next word to be called.

Days that are "Bingo Days" I am the most popular teacher in school. Students from other classes watch jealously from the doorway and try to sneak into the classroom to join the fun. Classes that are usually late show up early as word of Bingo spread quickly throughout the school.

After classes students come sit by my desk and play among themselves, turning to me to help them with their pronunciation. I love this game, but most of all I love to watch my students smile and laugh. I love to dance along to the songs they sing while winning and clap and cheer when the victor emerges. Bingo makes my day fun too!

"Come on teacher, next!"