Educational Pirate Battleship

Ahoy Instructavillians!  Today's instructable will show you how to use Educational Pirate Battleship to enhance a learning activity with school aged children!  I created the game while helping out with a math MTSS group in the school where I work, but the general game idea can be used in any academic area. 

Recommended Age: K--12+

Subject Areas: This game can be used in: All subject areas & Cross Curriculum (more on this later)

Learning Objective: Creating an interactive game that allows you to use many states standards for art, following directions, social skills, math, language and more to be used to teach a variety of subjects

Educational Pirate Battleship© can be used in any subject area by any school aged child. For the purpose of this instructable we will use the game in a math MTSS setting.

The game must be played with at least two players, but can also be played by a team.

Basic Game Rules:

Shots fired must be drawn using a straight line from the teams ship, no curvy lines from the ship.   The canon ball can be no larger than the erase on the end of a pencil.  Each ship must be hit three different times at three different locations of the ship in order to sink it.  Hits should have an X place through them.  Be good sports and have fun!

Other Rules:

Your own creativity can come to play here.  I would liken this to house rules in other games like Monopoly.  As we go through this instructable I will attempt to point out where other rules can come into play.


_{While I'm keeping the copyright, I do want any one out there to use the idea in their classroom with my blessing.  One day I might actually take this game to a game maker and it's for that reason that I'm holding onto the rights.}

Step 1: Materials Needed

Materials Needed

Game Board(s)
Pencil

Step 2: Game Boards

Attached here you will find a template for Educational Pirate Battleship.  One of the templates is blank, you can have children draw their ships.  These can be in a true ship shape, or you can simply have them draw squares and rectangles (other shapes would be fine as well)

Step 3: MTSS Math Educational Pirate Battleship

Here is one way the game can be played:

The MTSS group is split into two teams, Redbeard and BlackBeared

Each team has scratch paper at their table and pencils.

One member of each team goes up to the whiteboard and is given a math problem.

Everyone in the room writes down the problem and answer the question.  The two students at the whiteboard write the question down and turn around when they have the answer.

The first team to turn around gets to answer the question first, if they are wrong the other player at the white board has a chance to answer.  If both are wrong the teacher picks one student from the team that turned around first to answer, if they are wrong you move to the other team.  If no one is correct no shot is fired from the ship.

Whom ever is first and has the right answer is allowed to come up to the teacher desk and fire a shot. 

To fire a shot they must pick one of their ships and draw a firing line out from the ship.  They draw a dark circle no larger the eraser on a pencil.  The paper is folded in half and the student colors in a circle over the one they drew on the front side.  This presses the graphite to the other side of the paper and leaves a mark. 

If the "shot" hits a ship put an X through the ship and the team gets a point. (If it's the last of the three shot's you can make it worth more points as the ship is sunk)

If the shot misses no points are awarded and the next two members of the group go to the board.

The more questions right, the more shots you can fire.  Whatever team sinks all the ships first, wins.

Step 4: Many Ways to Play

This is just one way to play the game, it can be played with fewer players or one on one.  Any subject can be used and correct answer allow a shot to be fired.

If anyone wants to play for fun, this can be used as a recess game and turns taken back and forth.  I hope your students or child enjoy this as much as my MTSS group did!

I would love to hear how your students liked the game, what subject you used it in and any house rules you came up with!

Enjoy!