It is played on ruled grids (paper or board) on which each player's fleet of warships are marked. The player would be tracking the success of their own shots in a separate grid.īattleship (also known as Battleships or Sea Battle ) is a strategy type guessing game for two players. The grey boxes are the ships placed by the player, and the cross marks show the squares that their opponent has fired upon. For example for the square in row ‘Marcus’ and ‘play tennis’, Is Marcus playing tennis? or Is Marcus going to play tennis?.Īlthough the Battleships ESL game suits the varied forms of ‘be’ best, you could also use the game to practise other basic irregular verbs with beginners, such as have/have got, go, or do.A map of one player's ships and the hits against them, from a game in progress. It’s also a great way to practise questions.īy using activities instead of feelings you can also practise the present continuous or future with going to. Is Donna tired? or Are Mr and Mrs Andrews bored?. Students have to select the correct form of the verb for each subject, e.g. To focus solely on the verb to be, use emotions/feelings as columns. The Battleships ESL game is designed for practising subject-verb agreement with the verb to be. The first student to find all their partner’s ships is the winner.Importantly, if playing with multi-square ships, defenders must say “You sunk my battleship!” if all the squares in that ship have been hit. They record the responses in the appropriate grid depending on whether they are attacking or defending, with ticks and crosses. As described above, students take turns asking questions in the target language to try and find the positions of their partner’s battleships.Now keeping their partner secret from their partner, each player draws in their battleships in their ‘defending’ grid. One grid will be for attacking, and another for defending.With multi-square ships, use one two-square, one three-square, one four-square and one five-square ship. With single-square ships, ten usually works well. Specify the number of battleships to use.Younger students could all just copy your original grid.
With that partner, they draw two identical grids each in their notebooks. Yes she is, and draw a tick in the square.
If there is, model the correct affirmative answer, e.g. Is Donna tired? or Are you playing football? Demonstrate the process of finding the corresponding grid square to check if there is a battleship there. Selecting a row and a column, model a few questions in your target language, e.g. Fill in a few of the squares by drawing battleships on them. go shopping, play football, watch a movie). happy, sad, tired), or activities (verb in the base form – e.g. Label each column with either emotions/feelings (e.g. Donna, Mr and Mrs Andrews, You, I, Steve, We). Label each row with a variety of different subjects (e.g. If you are using ships that cover multiple squares, pre-teach the phrase ‘You sunk my battleship!’ĭraw a 6×6 grid on the board. You can either play with single-square ships (easier for younger students), or a few ships of varying size (as in the original). Pre-teach the word ‘battleship’, and show the students a picture of the original game if possible, as this will help many with the concept.