SCHOOLS: Battleship game turned math lesson is a direct hit

Fourth grade students at Brunswick Acres elementary school learn the basics of graphing by playing Battleship

By: Chinenye Okparanta
   Learning is not all fun and games, unless you are a student in Stacy Ta’s fourth-grade math class at Brunswick Acres elementary school.
   Ms. Ta is breaking down the basics of graphing for the 19 students in her class by having them play board games using paper and a multicolored rug with geometric designs.
   "The first thing we did was use the rugs just to learn how to plot," Ms. Ta said. "The big mistake the students were making was plotting the vertical points first and then the horizontal. So I wanted them to walk through it and be able to visualize it."
   The rugs that Ms. Ta’s class uses were donated to the school by the Parent Teacher Organization when renovations began at Brunswick Acres in late September. The PTO donated one of the multicolored rugs to each classroom.
   Ms. Ta got the idea to put the rugs to use after noting not only the bright colors, but also how geometrically suitable the design was to her math lessons.
   "The (rugs) are beautiful and bright with a perfect grid pattern, so I decided to use them for academics," Ms. Ta said.
   Ms. Ta organizes her students into two groups to play a game called Battleship, a game that she said has helped them with plotting coordinates on a grid.
   To play the game, one group of students stand at different line intersections on the rug, while another group stands at the dry-erase board unable to see the first group.
   The goal of the game is to have the group at the board correctly identify the location of the first group members by guessing the coordinate points on which the first group members are standing.
   The same principles also apply with the paper version of the game.
   For Ms. Ta’s students, learning is a lot more fun when they’re playing games.
   "Since we’re using grids, it’s really cool because we get to play Battleship so I’m learning how do math with numbers and playing," Casey Loftus, 10, said.
   Playing Battleship, both on paper and hands-on with the rug is helping 9-year-old Astha Joshi remember how to plot coordinates on an actual graph.
   "The teacher said that we first go right and then up," she said, gesturing to the horizontal and vertical lines of her graph.
   Ms. Ta has her students alternate between time on the rug and time at the desk with their own paper graphs.
   "The kids are very excited about it and it’s helping out," she said. "Fewer kids are confusing the order of the numbers."
   As the students stand on the blue, red and yellow rug and excitedly call out coordinate points, it’s clear that Ms. Ta’s method of math education has won their approval.
   "It’s a lot easier to learn math because she’s making it act like a board game and it’s not a test so we’re not moaning and groaning," Joey Cosgrave, 9, said. "It’s just a nice way to learn."