Battleship--Graphing Ordered Pairs

Target Curriculum: Mathematics

Target Grade: 5

SOLs: MAT.5.15  
Time: 50 minutes

Objective:
Students will identify the ordered pair for a point and locate the point for an ordered pair in the first quadrant of a coordinate plane.

Purpose:
The purpose of this activity is to reinforce a lesson on graphing an ordered pair of numbers by playing a game of battleship.

Materials:
Blank five by five grids
pencils

Procedure:

Each team (2) gets a blank five by five grid in order to play a game of battleship.
SHIP AREA COVERED
Carrier 4 coordinates
Battleship 3 coordinates
Cruiser 2 coordinates
Submarine 1 coordinate
Explain that you have previously determined the position of four different ships on the grid. The students must try to locate each ship by naming coordinate points. Take turns (in teams) calling out coordinate points until all the ships have been located and identified. As points are called out, put an X where a ship or part of aship is located, and a circle around those points where there is no ship. The team that locates and identifies all the opponents' ships first is the winner.

Observations:
As the class plays the game, make sure that the teams do not discuss their findings with each other.

Conclusions:
Discuss what the students have discovered so far about graphing ordered pairs. ASK-How did you understand the position called out? Do we need some uniformity
or rules? Is this (ordered pairs) a useful way of showing exact location?

Extension:
You may carry this lesson a step farther by asking the students how do they think we could show negative numbers?

Class Discussion Questions:
EMPHASIZE
1- Graphs are ordered pairs

2-The first number indicates the number of units moved to the right (or left) of 0.The
second number indicates a move up (or down)
.
3 A positive integer indicates a move to the right or up.