Mingle Bingo

• Mingle Bingo Game Card (modify as necessary to represent your students’ interests and backgrounds)

• Lively music

1. Distribute copies of the Mingle Bingo Game Card.

2. While music is playing, students are to mingle with their classmates and find a category for which they can fill in their names. Inform students that they should keep going until the music stops, but remind them that this is not a race! Encourage them to have a brief discussion with their peer about the corresponding category when they find a name to record in a box.

3. Start the music and tell the students to begin. 

4. Stop the music after 10–15 minutes or until most students have talked to all of their classmates.

5. Allow time at the end for students to share, either verbally or in writing, some of the facts and similarities that they learned about their classmates.

6. Close the activity with further debrief, either verbal or written, using a few of the questions from the Stage 1 Debrief Prompts.

To increase scaffolding:

• Require students to practice formal introductions with each of their peers. The Introduction Handshake activity can provide a foundation for this.

• Coach conversation skills by requiring that they ask a follow-up question and record the answer for each box in which they write a name. For example, Student A and Student B meet, and Student A tells Student B that she plays a sport. Student B might ask, “What sport do you play?” Student B would record Student A’s name in that box along with the answer to the follow-up question. 

• To integrate technology, have students take a picture or short video of their classmate and import it into a grid that corresponds to the Mingle Bingo Game Card. Students can use a supported program, such as Google Docs or PicCollage.