If you live in America, chances are you at least thought about watching the State of the Union address, however briefly.  I’m a mean teacher: I made my kids watch it.  It is part of their homework.

But they’re playing State of the Union Bingo as they do.

SotU Bingo works like this.

1. Make a 5×5 grid.
2. The center box says “Ladies and Gentlemen,” and it’s a freebie. Regardless of how the President starts his speech, the player always gets credit for that.
3. The night before the speech, have the students fill out the rest of the 24 empty squares with words like “Jobs” or “economy” or “War in Iraq” or whatever they think the president is going to speak about.
4. Words like “a”, “an”, “the”, or other simple words like that are off limits.  Words have to be about policies, like law and order, or scientific advances.  No more than 3 words in any box; but really, it’s best to keep your categories broad.
5. Each word you choose can only appear once.  “Jobs” is not the same word as “economy” even though they might seem like it.
6. On the night of the speech, players (students) listen to the State of the Union speech, or read it the following morning.  They get to fill in one square for each item on their card that the president spoke about.
7. Anyone who achieves “Bingo” — five across, five down, or a five diagonal — before the end of the speech can stop watching right then and there.

We’ll see how they do tomorrow.

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