Saturday Motivation- Battleship Game

It's Saturday and I am officially on Spring Break!!! I don't like that it is so early, but I am so glad for a break! 

I'm linking up with Joanne to share how I survived the day before Spring Break with sixth graders. 

This past week, we were all wired, teachers mostly! 

We had benchmarks to keep our students focused! It worked for the most part. I knew Friday I would have to be creative or go crazy. 

I purchased this game during the big sale at the end of February. I have seen many out there, this is the BEST!!!! 

source

This game comes with the option of using one quadrant or all four. 

I made all the boards and they were magically laminated in a days notice. 

(That never happens!) I lucked out that the aide who laminates had some extra time. 

As I was at home tossing and turning at 5am one morning, I started thinking, "How is this Battleship game going to work?" I don't have enough dry erase markers, I need erasers (socks in my guess), students need different colors, etc... I started panicking.  Then, I thought, they can just write it down, we can use x's and o's for hits and misses. I finally just got out of bed and started my day. Am I the only teacher who brainstorms in her bed? 

Friday comes, first period, I explain and it all goes well! I played with a student, we had so much fun! 

Second period, I played again with a student, it was still fun. 

Third period, I didn't want to play, I had reached my fun-o-meter . So, I made a group of three. It worked! I was surprised, but they totally got it. 

Some of the kids didn't though. I needed to be up and moving around. In retrospect, I should have done this class with quadrant one only. But, the challenge was good for them too. 

My afternoon classes went beautifully. It was a little loud, but heck, they were playing a game, that's to be expected. 

My afternoon classes also came up with a solution for the folders falling. They used our privacy  folders. I thought it was pretty smart of them to pull them out! 

This is how my board looked for game two. I marked all the misses and hits I guessed.  

This is how one of my boards looked for my ships. I only had to mark when they hit my ships. 

The beauty of teaching math is, it can fun. Games are PERFECT for math. Students were practicing ordered pairs. They were engaged! I was hoping for a walk through. But of course, glad it didn't happen. 

Plus, it was a great way to keep sane the Friday before Spring Break!!!