Printable Battleship Game (Editable Slides + PDF)

About this resource

What's inside this resource

A two-player Battleship-style board game gives students a five-ship coordinate-grid battle to play during indoor recess, as an early-finisher activity, or as a general classroom reward game. The download includes a printable rules page explaining ship placement, turn-taking call-outs ('hit,' 'miss,' 'sunk'), and win conditions, plus two board layouts — one for coloring in ships directly on the grid and one with cut-out ship pieces students can move and reuse across multiple games. The same content is also provided as an editable, read-only Google Slides file that a teacher copies into their own Drive before customizing and printing.

In the classroom

Teaching tips & learning objectives

Teaching tips

Laminate the cut-and-reuse ship version so the same board can be played repeatedly across different students without reprinting.
Make a personal copy of the Google Slides file (via the provided link, while logged into a Google account) before attempting to edit it, since the shared file is read-only.

Skills covered

Coordinate-grid navigation — students call out and locate positions using paired letter-number coordinates (e.g., 'J-9') on a 10x10 grid.
Turn-based strategic guessing — students use prior 'hit' and 'miss' information to narrow down the location of an opponent's remaining ships.

Good to know

Questions teachers ask about this resource

Why does the resource include two different board versions — one for coloring and one with cut-out ship pieces?

The color-in version lets a class play a single game per printed sheet using a marker, while the cut-and-reuse ship pieces let a teacher laminate a board and play the game repeatedly across different students without reprinting.