Bone Bingo gives St. Christopher fourth graders a chance to flex their sense of ‘humerus’

By BETH DONZE
Clarion Herald

The word “Bone-ous” – printed on the middle square of the Bingo cards – hinted that this would not be your typical version of the popular game of chance.

The orange-colored cards, filled with the names and images of various bones of the body, are taken out of storage every October by science teachers at St. Christopher School in Metairie for the playing of “Bone Bingo” with fourth graders.

After playing several rounds of Bone Bingo earlier this month, it was evident that students had mastered their recent, three-week science unit on the 206 bones of the body. They’ve got it down – from the uppermost bones that make up their cranium to the phalanges in their toes – and everything in between.

“This is something you sit on. What do you think I picked?” asked Dru Troescher, randomly calling out bones from a stack of cards and congratulating them when they came up with the answer: “coccyx.’”

Likewise, nearly the whole class shouted out “femur” when Troescher challenged them to name the longest bone in the body and check to see if they had it on their Bone Bingo card. 

“Y’all know some stuff!” said Troescher, a retired St. Christopher science teacher who created the game as a fun, pre-Halloween enrichment activity to cap off the bones unit taught by science teacher Aileen Peterson.

“It’s my favorite activity of the school year! They really know their bones!” Troescher marveled.

Boning up on the basics

As in the traditional version of the game, the young players shouted out “Bingo” after successfully marking off four corners or a diagonal, horizontal or vertical line on their playing cards as Troescher called out bone descriptions from the podium. Every time a given bone was announced, such as the clavicle (a.k.a., the collarbone), Troescher pointed out its location on her own body, reinforced its function and noted its relationship to neighboring bones.

Winners of each round selected Halloween-style prizes such as masks, spider rings and “crazy-eyeball” glasses.

But much more than a chance to get some swag, the game was a fun way to reinforce knowledge of the bones the fourth graders had studied during their regular science classes.

In many cases, that mastery entailed learning two names for the given bone – its scientific name and its common name. For example, the tibia is often called “the shin bone”; the humerus “the funny bone”; the mandible the “jaw bone”; and the sternum “the breastbone.”

“I call these my ‘wings,’” said Troescher, when “scapula” came up in the Bone Bingo call-out.

“Ms. Troescher is having problems with this one – the patella,” she said later in the round. “Where’s my patella? It’s your kneecap!”

Teaching moments abound

Troescher also seized the moment to throw in some related orthopedic information. Before calling out the first bone, she asked the fourth graders to name the two minerals that make up the bones (calcium and phosphorus) and reminded them to get their daily dose of vitamin D, especially when their bodies do not manufacture it naturally during the gloomy winter months and on days they are indoors.

“That's why vitamin D is called the sunshine vitamin,” she told them.

Bone Bingo was also a chance to teach a mini-Latin lesson: “vertebra” is singular, while “vertebrae” is plural.

“You have lots of bones that make up your back bone, but the ones in your neck are called cervical vertebrae,” Troescher told her students “The vertebrae that your ribs are connected to are the thoracic vertebrae. Sometimes older people have problems with another set of vertebrae in their lower back – the lumbar vertebrae.”
Peterson said she was proud that more than 90% of her fourth graders had gotten 100% on their science test on the bones – one of the bodily systems they are learning about this school year. She said a major teaching aid has been “Mr. Bones” – her classroom’s full size model of the human skeleton.

“Instead of just reading about the bones or and looking at them on a worksheet, they can actually touch them, feel them and label them,” Peterson said. “I think we have one or two (future) doctors in here! This is a great group of kids. They are very engaged. We start out with the basics, but there’s so much more they will add on as they grow older.”

Learning is fun!

Fourth grader Lillian Aleman said she is glad to have a sound foundation in orthopedics in the event she decides to become a doctor.

Lillian’s classmate, Jesse Jenkins, said his favorite bone is the sternum, “because it’s basically the strongest bone around your chest.”

Fourth grader Beau Dunn had a less scientific reason for his favorite bone of the human skeleton.

“I like the phalanges,” Beau said, “because it’s fun to say!”