"But wait!" You say, doesn't Bingo require a lot of props, such as a pile of little pieces of paper with words written on them, a hat to hold them in, pre-made bingo cards, etc. No! All you need to play bingo is to have a little faith and imagination, and to hope to hell that your boss isn't watching.

Here's how you do it:

Step 1. Find some vocab words (Handy hint: Look in your textbook!)

Step 2. Write them on the board.

Step 3. Draw a 9 slot bingo square (Handy hint: draw a box. Draw two horizontal lines and then two vertical lines inside box. Now you should have nine squares).

Step 4. Have the students copy the bingo square you drew on the board in their notebooks or some paper you stole from the copy machine when nobody was looking.

Step 5. Don't strangle the two or three retards who can't figure out how to draw a 9 square bingo card even though you did it right there in front of their eyes. Instead, hold them up to well-deserved ridicule by their peers.

Step 6. Have students write in random words from your vocab. list into each box of their bingo card. (Handy hint: do this on the board with your own hand-drawn bingo square).

A very special reminder: Some students still won't have any idea what the fuck is going on, and there will be one in every class. From now on, you should remember that this student is too stupid to play bingo. Think about that for a moment. Too stupid to play bingo. All the other kids get it, why can't s/he? Consider this student as good as dead as far as the English language is concerned, and move on to those you can actually help. Triage people, think triage.

Step 7. Start "randomly" crossing off words from the vocab. list, while saying them out loud. If your students try and sway you by shouting out certain words, save those words for last. Listen to their squeals of pain as you refuse to give them that one, final word that makes a precious bingo.

Step 8. Give a sticker, a piece of candy, etc. to whomever gets bingo first.

Step 9. Repeat until students catch on that you're tricking them into actually listening to you (those in the biz call this "listening comprehension" but we here at TES like to think of it as "shutting the hell up for once"). From then on, whenever your children demand to play a game, inflict BINGO on them.

Boy, this sure beats working at a call center in Winnipeg!