Saturday, October 5, 2013
Graphing Battleship
I was looking online for some activities to use for middle school math and one of the things I found was Graphing Battleship. This activity is on education.com. This link will take you to the activity: Play Graphing Battleship. Basically, it is the game of Battleship but each player has Cartesian coordinate planes for the playing boards and use coordinates for looking for hits. So instead of A4, a player asks for (4,-3). This would be a good activity to fit into the Grade & Geometry and Spatial Sense curriculum. It would fit under the Overall Expectation to describe location in the four quadrants of a coordinate system, dilate two-dimensional shapes, and apply transformations to create and analyse designs and the Specific Expectation to plot points using all four quadrants of the Cartesian coordinate plane. I think this would provide good practice in plotting and naming coordinates. It could be an activity students could do together if they had some extra time or as a centre activity. It gets students using the language associated with coordinates and plotting points by doing an activity with purpose.
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I checked the link reading all the steps. I think it is a a good activity for center based learning. During my teaching days, I used to have three ongoing centers in the class. Students were allowed to go work at these centers as they completed the daily tasks on hand. These centers were based on the concept students were learning in the class. One center would be kind of reteaching and a simpler activity, second for the students who needed more practice and third for students with advanced skills challenging them as they completed their work before everyone else.
ReplyDeleteI have seen simpler versions of this used in younger grades. I think it might be useful as a way to reinforce the quadrants of the cartesian graph when we introduce it to our students. This could be a reasonably brief activity as part of a bigger lesson, or would work very well in centers. Unfortunately, centers don't get used as often, or as effectively as they should, in the older grades. This would definitely be a fun activity that would foster students' learning without them really realizing it. It could be furthered with a discussion of how quadrants are used when searching areas.
ReplyDeleteI believe that whenever students can enjoy the learning process it's an added bonus. This is a good example where you're playing a game but need math knowledge and understanding to play. The game can disguise "the work" and result in increased participation in playing with a positive result.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Daniela said, it is a great feeling when a math assignment (or any school assignment) does not feel like work. The students like the feeling of 'playing' and 'interacting' rather than working, so the fact that they get to play a game during math class would stimulate their interest in the topic more than providing them with a note and a worksheet with multiple questions on this topic.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this game or activity with us. When I taught Grade 6 math-scattering plots, I noticed this was a game called graphing battleship. I did not get the chance to use it in my own teaching, but for sure this is a good teaching resource. If you are a big fun of math learning centers, students can have a center like this to communicate with others and they also need to apply the knowledge of scatter plots. If you are doing differentiated instructions in your teaching, you can consider this game as an accommodation for some students.For instance, for students who are not able to finish the activity by themselves, they can have peer tutoring with the help of peers. They can still learn and enjoy from this game. To sum up, they are learning by playing and they can build their math interests from this game. Therefore, I like to bring more games like this in my math teaching process.
ReplyDeleteReinforcing this skill is always a huge hit in my classroom. I have always enjoyed watching my students engage in any cartesian plane activity. It is fun watching them play with each other and therefore reinforce Graphing basics. I admit I am often shocked at how this skill needs to be taught every year and how the functions of a Cartesian plane need to be reinforced. What I mean by that is the need to be reminded to always move left or right along your x axis first and then along your y axis. This skill is taught from an early age and I am always in awe of how they need to be reminded of this. I am posting on a relatively older post, almost 9 years old, in those nine years I actually have used this resource quite often but there are much more updated, fun interactive sites that students may actually prefer. Teachers Pay Teachers offers several free resources, I do enjoy some paper pencil activities that reinforce this as well and a few years have made a grid on the floor of my classroom and had kids battle in a game of "Floor Wars" to reinforce this much needed concept. This skills transfer into everything in grade 9!
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