Connect 4 / Battleships - adapting an old favourite

 When I did my PGCE in 1994, I remember my mentor Bridget Clements doing a lot of Connect 4 games on the Overhead Projector. The pupils had to pick a square and make a sentence from picture cues for the row and the column to win the square. (OK, I know it's a rectangle, but squares don't have to be square, especially on a town plan or a boardgame.)

I still play similar games today but with one tiny twist. You can see from the example below that my sentences have three elements rather than two. The column, the row, and the square itself.

So to "win" the top right square for connect 4 (is it a good idea to start with the corners?), a pupil would have to say, "Au parc, je peux jouer au tennis." Then their opponent would take their turn to win a square.

We can play this on the board, or in pairs. With the words given on the sheet, as in this example, I use it early on in a topic, so pupils can practise making sentences with the scaffolding. They can say it in French to practise their pronunciation. But some think they are pulling a fast one and say it in English. Of course I pretend to disapprove, but they are actually having to translate, so it's still valid. The only thing that is unacceptable is if your partner just says, "That one" and points. In that case you don't let them have the square.

Then we can use the same grid to play battleships. Pupils secretly mark on the grid where they are hiding their ships. Again their opponent has to say all 3 parts of the sentence to hit the square and try to hit the ship.

After the game, pupils can identify which squares on the grid are true or useful for them. They can select them on the page. And then use them to talk or to write sentences, starting to make links with and / but / because:

Au stade je peux regarder un match parce que j’aime jouer au foot, mais je ne dois pas insulter l’arbitre. 

Then pupils can start to be more flexible and borrow ideas from different parts of the grid to say what they want to say:

À la piscine j'aime nager mais je ne dois pas courir parce que je peux tomber dans l'eau.