Battleship

Materials: white board and white board markers, or paper and regular markers

Description: This is a good game for young beginners, because it doesn’t use a lot of English, and they have a lot of fun trying to figure out where the ships are. It can also be used as a reward game. To set up the game, draw a grid of about 6 by 6 (larger for longer games, smaller for shorter ones). You can either draw this grid on the whiteboard, or on a blank sheet of paper. Label rows and columns with whatever you like: numbers, letters, colors, animals, food, etc. I like using colors and numbers. Draw the same grid in a notebook or on a scrap paper for your own reference, but this time, hide some ships in the squares.

When you’re ready to play, go over the English words for “ship” and “water.” Then tell the students that you have X amount of ships hiding in the ocean, and they will take turns to guess where they are. Students guess a square by calling out the coordinates (like “blue-five” or “pink-three”) and, using your notebook chart for reference, tell them either: “No, sorry. Water!” or “Yes! A ship!” Then draw either a ship or some waves in the square, so they know which ones they’ve guessed. The students win when all the ships are uncovered.

You can also let the students have a turn hiding the ships and telling the class “water” or “ship,” but it’s up to you if you help them, or if you sit back and take a turn trying to guess. I’ve also broken the kids up into two teams and let the teams hide the ships. Then I played against both teams at once, trying to find all their ships. It was a little confusing, but it worked.

Also, younger students really like it when you “ham it up” and add dramatic sound effects and over-acting when they find a ship or water. My class really liked the sound effect “sploosh” for water, and now they ask every day to play the “Sploosh Game!”

-Abeth S.