There are many many variations on Bingo played at my school. These are the most common:

Have a bingo grid set up with various activities, verbs, objects, whatever suits the grammar point. Then, have students find someone in the class that likes (or can do or whatever suits the day's grammar) one of the above objects. Either award points to students who get bingos or have the students fill the entire grid and then call out student names in true Bingo fashion to get winners. One of my teachers uses Bingo as a semi-daily writing/listening practice. He has students fill out a Bingo grid with words from the lesson then he gives out 25 words and sees who has the most bingos.

COUNTDOWN

When the students are learning numbers, ordinal or nominal, you can play this game. Have the students count one after the other. However, the student who has number "7" or any of its multiples must clap his hands instead of saying the number. The next student goes on with "8" etc. Of course, the students figure out ahead of time what number they will be so to make it a real game, have the AET interrrupt students by saying the next number between 2 students. Surprise! So the next in line is going to have to say the next number.

FAMOUS PERSON'S GUESS WHO!

Have pictures handy of famous people. The game works without them but is funny if you have pictures to show the students afterwards. Using the day's grammar point, give hints to the students as to the identity of the person you "are". Works best if students are in groups, award points by group.

FIND THE MATCHES

Here, make sets of cards representing foods, people etc. Whatever is appropriate to the grammar point. Have 3 identical sets of cards ready. The students must find the two other people in class with the same card. Then, once they have been found, they go to the AET/JTE and use the day's grammar point to demonstrate that they've found the other two.

GESTURE GAME

Any grammar point and any grade... though best with 1st year students.

Like the interview games, gesture games can be fun and useful for a variety of grammar points and levels. The game works best with points such as what? where? Ing verb forms etc.

This game works best if you split the class into lunch groups. Have each group decide the order in which someone will do gestures at the front. The JTE takes the volunteer outside to give or ask the student the thing he will be/do. Meanwhile, the AET does a gesture game and the students guess. When the AET is done, the student has his turn. Then another student steps out while the AET acts and so on and so forth. Points are awarded to groups who answer correctly and whose members acted well.

GO FISH!

You need 6 decks of trump cards (regular playing cards). Have the students get in groups of 5-6. Each group gets one deck of cards. Each student receives 5 cards. The rest of the cards are face-down on the table, not in a neat pile but scattered about. If students have pairs, they may discard them in a seperate pile next to them. To play, students ask each other in turn "Do you have XXX" or use whatever appropriate grammar point. If the student has the card, then he says: "Yes, here you go".If not, he says: "Go fish!" and the other student must pick a card from the table.

Students may ask anyone in the group, not always the next in line. The first person to run out of cards wins.

GUESS WHO!

Students have a grid of names, and what the person likes. 5 items per person. For example:

Miki    Mike   Ken

tennis  golf   Tennis

tofu    tofu   natto

driving riding driving

etc

For interrogatives, have the students use the interrogative after each hint and guess. Maybe a maximum of three guesses to make things interesting.

If the point is: He is... then instead, have the AET up front give hints. `he is XXX` to the students who must guess what the AET is.. Set up in lunch groups. Give students one hint and let one group guess. Then move to the next group, give them another hint and let them guess.

objective: Find out who he is!

IDENTIFY THE DIFFERENCES

Get several drawings with subtle differences. You know, like the ones in the games section of newspapers where there are 10 differences to find between two pictures. Have the students write on the blackboard what the differences are using the day's grammar point. So, if it's The XXX noun. Then, it becomes The hat + is different. More complex sentence patterns for 2nd and 3rd graders.

INTERVIEW GAME

Grammar Point: Any

In my school, whenever a grammar point doesn't lend itself very well to other types of games, the interview game is almost exclusively used. To play this game, you make two sets of papers. These are grids of 9-12 people doing various things. One set has the name of the person doing the action on half of the square while the other has names filled in for the other half of the squares. The object is to find the names of the people in all the squares.

To find the name, you use the day's grammar point. For example, if the point is: "Do you like tennis?" then the pictures are of different people playing different sports or eating different foods.

The conversation goes like this:

A: Do you like tennis?

B: Yes, I do.

A: OK, what is your name?

B: My name is XXX.

A: Thank you. Goodbye.

Or (if there is no name under that picture)

A: Do you like tennis?

B: No, I don't.

A: Oh, I see. Goodbye.

Some sections, especially at the beginning are especially difficult to find good games for because of the limited vocabulary. Here's a variation of the Interview game that works well for those points. For example, "I like".

The students write down the following: "My name is XXX. I like tennis."

They must then introduce themselves to the other students. When they find a student with the same interest, they get a point. This works best at the beginning of the year when students don't necessarily know each other yet.

Another variation is to have students question each other in the interview and to find out X number of people who like something different. The patterns are the same but this works well as an introductory exercise.

Variation 1: Students have a list of various activities. They must find students who like all the activities listed.

I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE

The AET spots an object in the class and says: "I spy with my little eye, + hint". The class is divided into 5-6 groups so the AET gives one hint and asks one group to guess what the item is. If they can't guess, he gives a second hint and moves to the second group who may try to guess the object. Just keep rotating.

LET'S RIDDLE GAME!

Have the students sit in a circle. Set the scene. "Let's go on a picnic, ski-trip, whatever..." and "Let's bring a XXX". Then, one by one, the students must say what they want to bring using the day's grammar point. The AET tells them whether or not they may bring this item. Before the game, the students must realize that they have to solve a riddle. For example, students may bring anything starting with the letter "E", or anything starting with a vowel, or anything starting from the first half of the alphabet, or anything ending in "s" or whatever else pleases you. To make it easier to spot the answer, you can write all the student's guesses on the blackboard.

ONIYAMA

Pick up items from each student in class and bring them to the front. Bags, books, unique-looking pencils, cases, bokkens, etc. Also take something from the JTE. First, pick up the JTE's item and ask accusingly to the class: WHO'S is this!? The JTE then comes up and apologizes for forgetting it here... Next, pick up one of the student's things along with a similar item of the JTE's and ask: Which is yours, this one or this one!? The words used can of course vary with the grammar point used. Then, it's the students' turn to go through the motions. Once it becomes very clear, have a student be Oniyama, the mountain-ogre that's angry at all the junk left in the class.

PICTIONARY

This game is very simple. You give a word or phrase to a volunteer student and he must draw pictures to let his team figure out what the word is. Have two students come up and draw to make it a real competition. Give each pair different words to avoid students copying off of each-other.

RESTAURANT GAME

First you need to make or obtain restaurant menus. Set menus usually work best. Then, in pairs, students go through the motions of eating out at a restaurant. One of the students is the waiter and the other, the customer. Students have choices and are invited to vary as much as they want to from the script. The AET either joins in or helps supervise, as appropriate.

THE MESSY ROOM

Students are given a picture of the AET's appartment (drawing of course) which is quite messy. From this picture, students must identify what there is in the appartment. For example, "There is a can of cola" or "There are two witches". Putting in funny things make it more a more interesting activity. Also good for practicing prepositions. (on top of, under, besides etc)

TRUTH DARE AND PROMISE

Grammar point: infinitive verb form or `I asked him to help` --> `I dare you to XXX`

Have the students split into lunch groups and write out 3 sentences each. One under `truth`, one under `dare` and one under `promise`. The students should write 2 such cards each, so 6 sentences per student. The AET should write some cards as well and put them in with the students.

Once the cards are written, have the students put them face down on the table. Each in turn, the student chooses whether to do the `dare` `truth` or `promise` then picks up a card and either does the action, tells the truth or promises to do XXX.

WERE YOU?/DID YOU?

Students are given a sheet with various activities written on them using the Were you or Did you pattern. Were you born in Tokyo, were you out shopping last night, etc. They must ask these questions to each other and find people who answer "yes" to the quesitions. The first to fill in his sheet wins. This is actually much like some forms of bingo and can be played as bingo is you wish.

WHO KILLED DORAEMON!?

This is a good game for any past-tense verb form or any grammar point that lends itself to an alliby. Have a set of cards representing actions, things, people, whatever suits the grammar. 4 or 5 cards however, have the picture of a murderer/weapon/something nasty. All students also have a complete list of what's on the cards. They must write in the names of the people who did XXX last night. The murderer picks one of the items from the list and claims to have done that last night. He can of course change his alliby as many times as he likes. Non-murdering students must find the identity of the murderer, he'll of course be one of the two people that claim to have done the same thing last night.

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