Turkey Bingo
I posted an honest story on my Instagram account today and briefly mentioned the Turkey Bingo lesson I did with my middle schoolers and got a lot of response to it. Many of my PLN wanted to know what Turkey Bingo was and how to play it. The only reason I call it Turkey Bingo is because I usually do it this time of year. I made it up a few years ago and posted it on TpT last year to see if anyone wanted to purchase a secondary book bingo game. Click here, if you want to share out with others to give credit. However, I plan on sharing it for free today in the hopes it can help some of my secondary ELA teachers/librarians, etc. with lesson plans during this hectic time.
Turkey bingo goes like this: Students enter the library and sit at the tables where there are either random laminated bingo cards and dry erase markers on the table for them already OR I have uploaded them digitally into Canvas, which is our LMS platform in my district. I played digitally this year so that’s how I will explain it. Students open the Module with the Pages bingo cards. Each one has 5 in it. They choose a random one and send it to Notability so they can easily edit it. Students then randomly choose one of the five to play on. I update the cards every year because what’s popular with students changes from year to year. Also what my ELA teachers can also change so I want to keep it relevant for them and recognizable to students as well. Not every book will be on every card.
Included in the Google Drive folder (or Zip file, if you choose to purchase on TpT) is the bingo caller card. This is the list of every book I have on the bingo cards alphabetized with the summary included. I try to choose books that have movie or TV adaptations so students recognize them. I also choose popular books from our library and books they’re reading with their ELA teacher. I bold some of the words in the summary so you can stress those words to help your younger students or those who don’t read much to easily recognize the book I’m calling because I don’t want it to be too difficult. Students play until someone gets a bingo and we check it. A lot of times they’ve gotten some wrong because this isn’t as easy as calling out a title. Students have to actually listen and use their context clues in order pick up on which book is which. Some are similar like Pretty Little Liars and The Uglies or The Vampire Diaries and Twilight, especially for those who haven’t see the shows/movies or heard of the books. The Pages are editable so if you have Pages, you should be able to edit to fit what’s popular on your campus. Or you can try and copy them over to Docs or Word. I hope this makes the next week or so easy for you all who might need a fun lesson to get kids ready for the holiday break, or you can Winterize it and do it in December (or any time, really!) Enjoy and gobble gobble!
