A Video Walk-Through of My Centers Bingo Boards

I am excited to share how I use these Centers Bingo Boards for both Math Centers and Word Work in my class. This has been a wonderful management tool for my kids and has allowed me to focus less on guiding them to make choices during this time and more on the work I need to do with other kiddos in Teacher Time.

These Bingo Boards also allow for kids to make choices about their own work, so while I am able to control most of these activities, students have the final say about what they will be working on, and that has helped to build their responsibility and has kept it interesting throughout the year.

Here's a quick video walk-through of how I fill out my Word Work Centers Bingo Board, so you can see how easy-peasy it is: {Note: Forgive my allergy-filled voice!}

My guiding principle for what I put into Centers Bingo is: What is good practice that, if students don't get to, I won't worry? For Word Work, this usually means activities like:

• Word Worth
• Place Value Spelling
• Letter Tiles
• Making Words
• iPad games
• Spelling City
• Secret Code (this is a fan freebie on my Facebook page)
• Cursive
• Sentences on whiteboards
• and more!

Note: These activities are available in the Word Work section in my TpT Store. You can also find Math Centers there, too!

I will often repeat choices two to three times on a board (check that they aren't all in line for a Bingo!) Also, I don't include centers that I want all kids to complete, since there may be a chance that they don't get to that square.

Any required recording sheets that I want kids to complete I will staple to the back of this sheet to make a "centers packet" that helps keep kids on-track with what they need to complete and keep the papers manageable for me (double-win!). I don't give Bingo signatures for this, but they can work on both Bingo and required centers during one Work Work/Math Centers time-- up to them. 

My due date requirement is that they need to have at least one Bingo (five in-a-row) and the packet finished by the time our unit is done. This can vary, but it's usually seasonal, so several weeks-ish?? It varies *so much*, sorry I can't be more precise!! Most kiddos end up with more than one Bingo and all required sheets complete, while my strugglers may have just one Bingo and all sheets complete, so the Bingo is a nice way to keep kids working on a variety of practice strategies and not hear "I'm done!" throughout center time :)

Of course, you can use these *however you'd like* so you may choose to put center activities on there and then require kids to get a blackout instead of just a Bingo-- up to you!!

"One Minute Warning"

As I am wrapping up Teacher Time, I will give kids a "one minute warning". This tells all students that transition time is approaching (but they shouldn't start cleaning up yet!), and it tells my Word Work/Math Centers kids that they need to come see me for a Bingo signature.

If they need a signature, they need to show me:

• their Bingo board
• their Word Work or Math Centers work

Because of our rotations, there are usually six to eight students in the Word Work/Math Center center at one time. *Not all of them will need a signature, since some were working on the attached recording sheets- I do not need to see those kids for Bingo signatures, so I end up seeing about four kids for signatures at any given time.*

If I see that the student has completed the work, following directions and has it correct (or mostly correct), I will sign the box on their Bingo board. In our class, they need to get five-in-a-row going up-down, across, or diagonally. If they get a bingo, I give them a small sticker and have them start going for another Bingo.

Teacher Tip: To make this easy on you and to have the kids stay focused, have them plan their Bingo the first day you pass these out. This also helps with our 7 Habits work of "Beginning with the end in mind"! I will simply have the kids put a small dot/star/checkmark in the squares they will be working on for their first Bingo. This helps keep them focused, practice goal-setting, and makes it easy for me to check their progress along the way. 

If you are interested in these board, they are available in my TpT Store for both Word Work Bingo and Math Centers Bingo. 

For more information on centers in my class, be sure to check out the Daily 5 and Math Rotations tabs at the top of the page- LOTS of information can be found there to help :)

I hope this walk-through helped give you some ideas for center management this upcoming year. Of course, you may choose to use them in a completely different way, and that's totally fine! That's the beauty of editable PDFs :) Let me know if you have any questions below and I hope you are enjoying these last few weeks of summertime!