I will start my first blog though with an idea to use in your own classroom. I wish I can claim this as my own, but my dear friend and former colleague originated the game and I have since taken it and made it my own. I am huge sports fan, especially football so this game has a special place in my heart. Almost everything you need for this game is attached, feel free to email me with questions. I have also attached some pictures that might help you visualize. After returning from winter break, I start a game called "Super Books" I tie it in with the Super Bowl so this year it was "Super Books XLVI." The whole game is based on reading and requires a parent volunteer in your classroom everyday for about a half-hour. If you can handle longer, it would be to your benefit. The children all get tickets that they will use to play the game. At home, they need to read or be read to, a book or a chapter a night. Then they or their parents fill out the tickets and send them back to school. If a child has a ticket, they can play, if not, they can't. This helped re-spark the excitement of reading after being away on break.
Now on to the game. As I am from Chicago, I am huge Bears fan and still keep the dream alive that someday we may make it back to the big game! So the game takes place in the Bears home turf even if we have no chance of being in the Super Bowl. I usually have a group of boys in my class that enjoy sports as much as I do but might prefer other teams. This year, we had a big Packer following so I had the Bears play against the Packers. Even though the game is based on reading, once you start playing, a lot of math is involved. Another area of the curriculum that could use some boosting after break. I have attached a letter that explains the rules and how to play. Rather than re-write it all again here, please just read the letter. I had a binder with all the prizes that had the stickers in it (see below), the student record sheet for the parents to record what each child read every night, the rules and the scoring procedure. This was helpful for them so they didn't have to bring anything with them.
Prizes and other fun stuff. You will see in the letter that every 10 yards a child gets a prize or gets to go for a field goal or touchdown. Here is how I handled all that stuff. I went to Constructive Play Things which is basically a party supply store and got a lot of different football things. I got football stickers to put on the tickets after the child had played, this also stopped any potential from using the same ticket the next day. For the different prizes I got football erasers, pencils, and notebooks. I had different Bears cups and buckets to put all the prizes in.
Then for the field goal, they actually had a small, about a foot tall, field goal! The kids could be as close or far away as they wanted but they had to keep their elbow on the table. Then they got to throw the little football through to make a field goal. My friend who initially did this actually made large goal posts and had a net for the kids to kick the field goal. If you have the space, go for it, I just didn't have the room in my class. For the touchdown, I brought in my Bears bags game and propped that against the wall. They got 4 tries to get a bag in the hole. If they did, TOUCHDOWN! I put tape lines out so they could step closer each time. Then after the touchdown they get one try to go for the point after or a 2-point conversion. Here they could stand on the closest line if they wanted. If the bag landed on the board, point after, if it went in the hole, 2-point conversion.
This game had so many levels of learning and it was so fun for the kids! I think it's also nice for the parents to come in and see me in action. Our game ended this past Friday and I put some stats on my class website. This is where you want to make sure you have the parents recording the tickets. I had over 150 books/chapters read in 18 days, all of my students played the game at least once and about 8 of them played every day. So more than anything, I knew a lot of reading was taking place!
SBLetter SBRules SBSign-up SBTickets SBScoring SBReadingLog SBQuestions
