Today's mathematics lesson was certainly interesting: we played a game of Battleship! That's right, we played a board game.
Don't worry, there was method in this apparent madness: our mathematics teacher was educating us about coordinates and figured the best way of doing so was by playing a game of four-team Battleship. Essentially, it was the teacher vs. table 1 vs. table 2. vs table 3; if a team fired on, say, coordinates (5, -3), they would fire a shot onto each of the other teams' fleets. Naturally, it would count as a hit if a team had a ship there and a miss if they didn't.
The game ended when one of the fleets was destroyed; for this game, our teacher lost while my table only suffered the loss one vessel (our carrier) and had minor damage to another. Our teacher commented that my table appeared to be "invulnerable"; the positioning of our fleet had been conducted well!
I thought our teacher had come up with a fun and creative way of teaching us about coordinates, which was why I felt a little sorry for him when he was defeated. Nevertheless, I think he enjoyed the game, as did the class overall.
This reminds me of my 6th grade social studies class. I'm horrible with geography and directions - my parents said my teacher suggested to them I play battleship to learn directions at the parent/teacher conference. Never played it - did it help?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if it was helpful with geography per se but it was useful for helping to understand coordinates. :)
DeleteThe kids were playing Battleship at indoor recess last week. That's one of the few games I like to play with kids.
ReplyDeleteIt's a great game; easy to master. :)
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