Battleship for Letter and Number Practice

Regularly practicing numbers and letters is very important in any language.  Letters and numbers are everywhere, so students should be able to express them and understand them. Being able to spell words for students in French is also a great way to keep your classroom even more in the target language.

Making a board is super simple.  I just turned my document in MS Word so that it was landscape instead of portrait.  Then, I put in a table that was 21 boxes wide and 15 tall.  Down the first column on the left side, I put in letters and then I put numbers across the top row.  I also included the terms at the bottom for hit, miss and sunk.

Students each get two boards: one for putting their own boats in and the other to mark their guesses for their partner.  I actually laminated a classroom set and put them in manila folders so that when you open the folder at a 90 degree angle, it looks kind of like a battleship board.  By laminating them, students just use dry-erase markers to do their marking, then they can be reused over and over again.

The kids love this game! They especially love saying hit, miss and sunk in French while playing. It is nice because it can be conducted 100% in the target language.

CLICK HERE for a free download of the template!

Plus Haut/Plus Bas: A Fun Way to Practice Numbers

Have any of you ever seen the Price is Right?  Remember that game where you have three different prizes and you have 30 seconds to guess the price while Bob/Drew tells you higher or lower?  While thinking of a way to practice numbers with my students, this game came to mind.

I haven't quite figured out how to apply it, but I'd love to do some sort of contest where each student has a partner and they have 60 seconds to get as many right as possible.  It could get boring having only one group go at a time in class, but there also needs to be some accountability.

In the meantime, I came up with a different way to do "plus haut" (higher) and "plus bas" (lower).  Remember the Who am I? game I discussed in a previous blog post?  This is VERY similar to that.  I put slips of paper with numbers written on them in those badge holders (I HIGHLY recommend you get a set of these.  I use them a lot for games and whatnot.  They're awesome because you can keep reusing them for different units by putting different slips in them).  I give each student a badge but put it around their neck backwards so that the number is on their back.  Then, they must figure out which number they are.  They guess a number and whoever they are asking has to say "plus haut" or "plus bas".  Once they figure out who they are, they turn the badge around to their front.  This not only requires number knowledge on the part of the asker, but also of the teller.