One thing that I have loved over the years is incorporating sports into the classroom. One of my favorite ways to do this is with Measurement Olympics. You can find that post by clicking HERE. These types of sports-themed classroom activities normally require a little bit of movement, which is always necessary in the spring! Students are restless. Teachers are tired. Sometimes getting up and being active is just what everyone needs. With that being said, I have a whole new batch of activities for you AND a couple of freebies. Let’s take a look…
Click HERE to find more information about All Star Reading
All-Star Reading centers around a reading passage titled The Big Day. It’s about a girl named Jamaya who really wanted to make the basketball team, but she was incredibly anxious. It’s definitely something that we can all relate to! With this story, students create Slam Dunk Summaries. The posters, anchor charts, and sports-themed activities all assist in helping students to successfully summarize a story.
Jamaya loves basketball, so it’s only fitting that the students play a little game themselves. Students choose a basketball card and read which type of word they must locate in the story. If they choose verb, they find a verb in the story. Then, they will write that verb in a NEW sentence. After they have created a new sentence they can shoot some hoops!
Here’s another idea (that will be a FREEBIE for you!). Students have a stack of verb cards. These verbs come straight from The Big Day story. Students toss a pom onto the basketball court. This will tell them which type of verb tense to use in a new sentence. Students write down their verb, verb tense, and a sentence using that verb.
Even though Jamaya loves basketball, I wanted the students to get to play other sports as well while completing the activities. Students brainstorm together character traits that describe Jamaya. Then they locate the text evidence that proves that character trait actually describes the character. This can all be built on the class anchor chart.
After the character trait mini-lesson, students play a little game of tennis. Students make their tennis rackets out of paper plates and popsicle sticks. Students must describe the main character and provide text evidence before they can pass the tennis ball (which is a pom) back and forth.
Of course, we can’t forget vocabulary! There are 9 vocabulary words within The Big Day. After learning about the words and their meanings (using the provided cards), students play Word Knock Out. Students set up table tents that describe the word with definitions, pictures, synonyms, antonyms, or sentences. Students put their boxing glove around their wrist, read the outside of the table tent, identify the word being described, and knock it down to check their work. When they knock it down, they open the table tent up and reveal the answer.
You may even want to tie the sports-themed classroom activities into your math block. Students can play a game of basketball to practice their data collection and graphing skills. Partners get together. One holds the bucket. One tosses the ball or pom. Students collect information about their makes and misses. Then they will create a graph based on their data collected.
After students have played a game of basketball, collected their data, and created the graph you can make a whole class graph. Students take note of how many baskets that they made during the activity. Then they add their basketball to the correct category. Now you can analyze the data as a class!
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Hey, y’all! My name is Amy Lemons and I am passionate about providing students with both engaging and effective standards-based Math and ELA lessons.
Sample a day of Rooted in Reading with these lesson plans and activities for Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary, and Grammar!
