Battleships! From beginner to A Level.

Hi there, it's been a while.

I've been busy with a lot of other projects recently so I apologise for the lack of posts over the last 8 months or so.

Anyway, here's the post...

One of my favourite speaking tasks ever is Battleships.

It gets the students involved (particularly the boys) and also has a nice competitive element to it.

It works best with beginners but can be differentiated up to A level and getting students to create their own is even better.

There's a powerpoint template on TES from agcb256 here.

I always make a powerpoint version to play as a group before letting the students loose on the task, as some of my students may have never played this before.

Usually, it will be "Où est X?" with a few hidden photos of me or Lindsay Lohan.

The students are then given a slip of paper with a grid on it, like this:


They then add crosses, faces, etc...

and with their partner they then try to guess where the battleships have been hidden by reading out sentences: e.g. "J'adore les maths" is a hit and "J'adore l'anglais" is a miss.
For those of you thinking it's far too simple, you can differentiate it for more able/experienced students.

Here's a version for A level students. In this version, based on Maupassant's Boule de Suif, students have to either come up with a relevant quote from the story or explain the link between the character and the theme.

You could even make a GCSE version to practise possible speaking exam questions, although personally, I prefer the cootie catcher, snapdragon, fortune tellers to do this.

Enjoy.