ESL vocabulary bingo cards

Running vocabulary bingo with English learners

The page opens with Colours and shapes loaded on 4x4 cards, 30 cards and 4 per page, which is a class set on 8 sheets of paper. Use Start from above the word box to switch to food and drink, animals, or the classroom list. Set the card count to the number of learners, and cut the list to the words you have actually taught: bingo practises recognition, so a card full of new words just turns into guessing. Your edited list stays in this browser for the next lesson.

Three ways to call

Say the word. The simplest version is a listening game: read each word from the caller sheet, twice, and learners find it on their card. This works from the first week and is good for sound pairs learners confuse, such as sheep and ship or pear and bear.

Show a picture or mime it. Hold up a flashcard, point at something in the room, or act it out (flap your arms for eagle, pretend to sharpen a pencil for sharpener) and say nothing. Learners have to retrieve the English word themselves, which is harder and better practice. For the classroom list, the instructions are the fun part: call stand up or put your hand up and the whole class does it before marking the square.

Call a definition or a clue. For stronger groups, describe the word instead: "it is yellow and long, and monkeys eat it", "a shape with six sides", "you use it to make a pencil sharp". Ask the winner to read their line back aloud so the class hears every word in it again, and correct pronunciation then rather than during the game.

How long a game lasts: with 30 learners on 4x4 cards and a full list of about 56 words, our simulation of 4,000 games found the first line after a median of 14 calls, and between 9 and 19 calls in eight games out of ten. That is five to ten minutes if you call slowly and repeat each word. After the first line, keep going for four corners and then a full card. If you trim the list to 30 words, games end much sooner, so 3x3 cards suit short lists and young children.

Spelling and the words chosen

The lists use British spelling and British words: colour, grey, yoghurt. A few words differ in American English, so change them before printing if your class learns US English: sweetcorn (US corn), crisps (US chips), chips (US fries), biscuit (US cookie), ladybird (US ladybug), rubbish bin (US trash can), timetable (US schedule) and break time (US recess). We chose eraser over the British rubber because both countries understand it.

These are everyday beginner words we picked and wrote for this page; they are not taken from any exam syllabus or published word list, and they are not graded by level. They are mostly nouns that are easy to show with a picture or an object, plus colours, shapes and short classroom instructions. For reading practice with very young native speakers, the sight words page has high-frequency words such as said and because, which are hard to picture but common in print.

Printing

Four per page is the default because one-word squares stay readable on a quarter sheet; choose 2 per page for 5x5 cards or for young learners who need bigger squares. Press Print cards with margins at Default and scale at 100%, or Download PDF to print from a school computer. Laminated cards and a dry-wipe pen let you reuse the same set all term.