Lesson:Word battleships

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Word battleships is a more elaborated version of noughts and crosses.

Objective

• Practice pronunciation and spelling.

Method

• Pairwork

1. Students are given a handout with two grids, each with 18 columns and 18 rows. At the top of each column, there is one of the 18 letters many students often find hard to distinguish (typically, but depends on L1 influence, the following: A, E, I, O, U, C, G, H, J, K, Q, R, S, V, W, X, Y, Z). At the beginning of each row, one of the 18 numbers they often have difficulty with (typically 5, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 76, 80, 90). Depending on L1, teachers may wish to use other letters/numbers.

2. Students have to write twelve words, horizontally or vertically (but not diagonally), in the top grid as follows: two words with six letters; two words with five letters; three words with four letters; three words with three letters and two words with two letters, that is, 12 words in total.

3. When both partners are ready, they take it in turns to ask what letter the other student has in one of the squares, e.g. 13C, and write that letter in the corresponding square of their bottom grid. If there is no letter, the player says “BLANK”.

When they think they have enough letters to know what the word is, they may "attack" by correctly spelling it out. If the attack fails, they miss a turn. They should be reminded to pay particular attention to their pronunciation as tempers may start flying when someone finds out later that the other student misunderstood an "i" for an "a" or a "g" for a "j"!

See also

• Vocabulary ELT games