CLUMBINGO: A great back to school lesson.

So, you've just met your students for the first time. You will need a great first activity, what do you do?

This post is written for teachers and trainers who have just met their students or trainees for the first time. Normally, an ice-breaker is done. However, it is important that such activities are high-energy and incorporate some form of content as well.

Image taken from https://goo.gl/images/tBRVDa

Enter CLUMBINGO, a combination of a game called Clump and Bingo. I focus on teaching English in my institution, as such, I will format this lesson as an English lesson. However, I have used this for training activities with adult students as well. As such, I hope you can use some of these methods for your class or training.

Here's how the lesson goes:

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Introduction
The teacher starts by asking everyone in the class to stand up and move all the tables and chairs to the side. Space is needed for this activity.

In CLUMBINGO, the teacher has to get all the students to clump together in groups.

The teacher can ask the students to clump together into groups of a particular number as long as its more than one. This is to get the students familiar with how CLUMP works.

An example of how CLUMP in CUMBINGO looks like, Image taken from https://goo.gl/images/hPyk4k

After a few rounds of clumping into groups of varying numbers, the teacher will then hand out a sheet of paper detailing the following categories, month of birth, place of birth, favorite food, favorite movie, favorite actor, speaks more than one language and favorite color.

The idea is that every time the teacher asks the students to clump together into a particular group, such as month of birth, the students will run into that group of that particular month. The students will then have to sign at least one person's name on that sheet.

This activity serves as a good way to get the students reacquainted and a good ice breaker to start off the class.

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Activity 1

The first activity starts is used to fulfill the objectives set forth by the lesson. For this lesson, the teacher will continue with clumping the students one final time into groups of 4.

The task for this activity is to complete a short presentation on 'My class'. The students will use the information found on the piece of paper and talk about some of the students' interests, hobby, place of birth and other components found on the bingo sheet.

If the teacher is teaching a class where the students are weak in their language ability, it is recommended that suggested sentence patterns are given. For example:

• John's hobby is.... whereas, Abby loves to...
• Mary was born in... On the other hand, Kim is...
• Jason loves the color... As for Nathan, he likes....

This should provide the students with help needed to present their work. In addition, it should reduce any anxiety that the students may have.

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Conclusion

The lesson can end after the presentation with a short recap by the teacher. The lesson as a whole is meant to be light and easy as having a heavy first class may not be advisable.

On the other hand, if you are a trainer and are dealing with adults, this lesson works well by running CLUMBINGO first, present your talk and end the lesson.

I hope this lesson helps! As usual, do drop a comment below if you have any questions or if you think its helpful. Happy teaching and Happy Steeming!

Image taken from https://goo.gl/images/LigmyW

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