| While it is true that most of us tend to think of bingo as | | | | developed from the frequency which words appeared |
| a leisure activity, and that a lot of pleasure can be | | | | in popular children's books of time, and today is still |
| derived from playing the game, it is also true that with | | | | used in teaching English reading and in English as |
| a few simple adaptations versions of bingo are well | | | | Second Language (ESL) classes. |
| suited to classroom and educational use. There are in | | | | The idea of Dolch bingo is to play bingo in class using |
| fact a wide variety of different ways that bingo can | | | | cards printed with words chosen from the Dolch word |
| be played in education, and it can be used to teach a | | | | list, rather than the usual numbered bingo cards. The |
| range of different subjects including vocabulary, | | | | teacher acts as the bingo caller, and the students have |
| reading, English, foreign language and math, but in this | | | | to find the words on their card. It can be played on a |
| article we will discuss how bingo is being used by | | | | regular basis, perhaps for a few minutes at the start or |
| teachers to help teach sight words, such as the words | | | | end of class, and is a fun way to help student's |
| on the Dolch sight word list. | | | | improve their skills in recognizing these words. The idea |
| If you are not familiar with the concept of sight words, | | | | can also be extended to using any list of words that |
| these are words that children must learn to recognize | | | | the teacher might choose. |
| to achieve English reading fluency, and in many cases | | | | Of course in order to play these educational versions |
| are either difficult or impossible to sound out. Various | | | | of bingo, the teacher will need a suitable set of bingo |
| such lists of such sight words have been devised, but | | | | cards. Fortunately these can be quickly and easily |
| the most famous is the "Dolch sight word list", which | | | | prepared with the help of a computer and some bingo |
| devised by Edward William Dolch, pHD, in 1948, for his | | | | card creator software. |
| book "Problems In Reading". The Dolch word list was | | | | |