Battleship

The key take out from this activity is to show and demonstrate to participants the difference
between closed and open questions.

Directions:

Follow these steps:

1- Split your class into two equal teams

2- Make sure each team has one copy of the battleship grid in their workbook
3- Tell teams that they will both compete In this game and the winning team is the team
who can sink the battleship of the other team. By sinking it we mean the team who finds
out first where the other team is hiding their battleship
4- For each team to hide their battleship, they need to agree as a team on a square within
the grid to hide their battleship in (B4 for example)
5- Now that each team chose a square where they will hide their battleship, each team
must secretly tell you which square they chose without the other team hearing
(alternatively you can ask each time to write it down on a small paper and hand it to you)
6- Explain to the group that each team has 6 closed ended questions (Yes or no questions)
to ask the other team. So, they have to make good use of each question, make a
strategy to be able to find out where the other team’s battle ship is hidden first to win.
7- Teams will take turns asking their questions.
8- The last question, question #6 should be the final guess (for example is it in B4?)  

This game is very competitive and it’s a lot of fun to run with any group, once a winning team is
declared you should ask the whole class:

How could the game be changed so that the battleship can be discovered in just one question?

Look for: Ask an open-ended question like “where is the battleship” and not ask closed ended
questions like we did in this activity where it took too much time and a whole strategy to be
developed to find out the piece of information we need to know.