Battleship!

I had a lot of trouble getting the kids to understand how work with coordinate grids.  I exhausted literally everything I could devise.  In Texas the kids have to be able to identify and place points, move points, and sketch the outcome of geometric translations on a grid.  Being my first year in 5th grade, I had never dealt with the coordinate grid before so I was a little lost on what to do.

One night I was trying to think of an interesting and engaging way to practice working with coordinate grids and ordered pairs.  Suddenly I had an epiphany.... Battleship!! That's right I said Battleship!! It was a perfect idea. Most of my students knew how to play the game AND the entire game is built around a coordinate grid.

I passed out two grids to each student.   We started out by taking notes over the parts of a coordinate grid and how to plot points. I had them take their notes on one of the grids that I had passed out. 

 

 



This really seemed to help the concept of locating the points on the grid stick.  Then we took another blank grid and I had each kid select 4 different points on the grid.

 



Then the kids all partnered up and took turns trying to find each other's points.  They would call out a coordinate and then their partner would tell them if they hit or not.  If they missed their partner would give them a clue like "Move left 2."  Once found the position on the grid they had to call out the new ordered pair.  If they missed the second time then the next player went, if they found the point then they got another turn.

When I was reflecting on this activity I decided that next time I do it I will have the kids plot 4 sets of points, the way the ships in Battleship take up several positions each. I also decided that each person would only get one turn at a time even if they make a hit on one of their partner's "ships".

The kids really enjoyed this activity and it gave me something to relate back to when we began working on sketching the outcomes of geometric transformations.  I can't wait to try it again and see if the changes I want to make will improve the activity.


Jason