Start with blank 5x5 bingo sheets and a set of vocabulary cards, with one word per card and a picture associated with the word on the back. The instructor can just hold up the picture side of one card and tell the students to write it in a random square. Or it can be done through participation: Spread the cards out the table, pics up, no looking at the words. Two people do rock-paper-scissors, the winner gets to choose a card and say it, the others have to write that word at a random place on the sheet. Take the card away after it has been called. Just make the sheet one lesson, play the bingo next lesson. To play the bingo: two students (just two who happen to be sitting across from each other) do rock-paper-scissors and the winner gets to call a word, which everyone colors in. When someone gets a bingo say "Let's check this!" have the student read off his/her words and ask everyone else if each one is OK. If it's a bingo, write the winner's name on the board next to a #1. Continue on to get a #2 and #3 (more or less depending on how much time you have, usually best to play until everyone gets a bingo. You could even give out stickers to them as they win). Can be done with numbers, times, etc.
While bingo is typically a game where the players simply listen and wait for the numbers on their cards to be called. It is important to notice how every opportunity is taken to force production by the students. This is not only done in the playing of the game but in the creation of the cards. Randomness in the placement of the squares is still ensured, but in a more organic way that does not require much monitoring. Putting the square calling in the students’ hands is actually the key concept here: where it was a unilateral listening, non-interactive event, the students now must produce language and listen to others’ productions in order to try to win the game. Not only that, but by being able to call squares themselves, they participate in the game in a way that gives them a stake, thus increasing the chances they might win. This chance of winning is the key motivation, and allowing students to control this is the trick used to entice them to produce language that they normally would not. The checking routine, where students read back the bingo, can also be modified so that there is more of a production task than simply reading the square: making a sentence, saying the opposite, etc.
by Ken Romeo and Will Percy