Turning A BasketballTournament Into A Learning Experience

  Its time for the annual three day basketball tournament.  The tournament begins today and ends Saturday and involves 7 schools bringing both male and female teams.

Its kind of hard to teach classes when our school is on the court so rather than fight the kids to get them into class, I took them to watch the games but they still had an assignment.

Their assignment was to select a player on one team and mark down all the baskets, attempts, steals, etc that player made.  They had to collect data for each game. Basically, they'd follow that player whenever that team played. Of course, they also had to monitor someone on our team because of school loyalty.

At the end of each match, I collect the forms and hold on to them till Monday.  Every game, students received a new form so by the end of the event, I had a stack of data for the students to analyze.  Come Monday, students are given all the data they collected to analyze.

I expect them to calculate Field Goal Attempts, Field Goals Made, Rebounds, Steals, Assists, Turnovers, Free Throw Attempts, Free Throws Made, Fouls, and Technicals for every player they followed.  Once all these stats are calculated, I ask students to enter it into a shared google document that all students can check.

Once all the stats have been collected and entered, it is time for students to decide who they want for their perfect team.  Students  have to explain why they chose each player, why they are assigned the position they have and justify it using the data from the shared documents to support their choices.

Some years, I pair students up and other years, I ask students to do it individually but either way, at the end, students are expected to share their ideal team with others in class and they have explain their choices.  This adds a speaking component to everything because my students hate speaking in public and avoid it at all costs.  If they are too shy to do it in front of the class, I'll let them make a short video I can play in front of the others.

This is my version of Fantasy Basketball because it uses real players, real stats, a chance for them to apply mathematical principals to a game they play year round. In the summer, they play on wooden decks and in the winter, they play at lunch or at open gym.

Let me know what you think, I"d love to know.