Musical instruments bingo

Musical instruments bingo tips

• Sort the pictures into families before the first round: strings (violin, cello, harp, guitar), woodwinds (flute, clarinet, oboe), brass (trumpet, trombone, tuba) and percussion (drums, xylophone, triangle). During play, ask students to name the family before they mark a square.
• Keep audio clips to three or four seconds. A trumpet fanfare, a harp glissando or a single triangle ring is enough to identify, and short clips keep the round moving. Save look-alike pairs such as violin and cello for older grades, where the difference in pitch is the lesson.
• Have students describe the sound before marking: 'The tuba is low and brassy.' The sentence takes five seconds and gives you a chance to correct words like brass, woodwind and percussion. Shy students can whisper it to a partner instead.
• For partner play, one student gives a clue such as 'I have strings and you pluck me' and the other finds the picture. Plucked clues fit guitar, harp, banjo and ukulele, so the searcher has to ask a follow-up question, which is exactly the reasoning you want.
• End by asking which instruments students have heard live and which are hardest to tell apart by ear, such as flute and recorder or oboe and clarinet. List the answers on the board as the starting point for the next listening lesson.

Best for

Ages

Ages 6 to 11, grades 1 to 5

Group size

Whole class of 15 to 30, or partners and small groups

Duration

15 to 25 minutes per round