Day 63: Battleship

I was hanging out with a teacher friend and trying to figure out what I was going to do on Friday when she tells me about Battleship. It's not Battleship in the sense you're probably thinking, but it's fantastic.

The goal: Get kids to practice and help each other so everyone understands the confusing concepts for the test.

The game: Each group got a list of problems to work through. Everyone at the table is working on the same problem. If everyone gets it right the first time and I don't have to provide assistance, the kids get to either blow up two blocks on other ships or repair one of the blocks on their ship. If they get it wrong on the first try but fix it the second time, they can blow up one block. If they need me to explain it, they don't get to blow anything up, but they can move on to the next problem.

The kids loved it. It was hilarious because I didn't tell the class which group was which ship so their self motivated goal was to figure out which boat was the team they wanted to attack.

1st period's winner

2nd Period's winner

3rd period's winner

Three way tie in 4th period

VERY close game in 6th. They played the adding blocks back strategy.

lots of thinking

Math should always be done on Darth Vader's face.

Such smarties!

I did have a kid at the end of the day tell me that she didn't like it because her group left her behind. I'm always looking for ways to improve this problem but haven't figured it out yet.