Planning Ahead

  In about two weeks, our school will be hosting a large basketball tournament, well large for us.  There will be 8 to 10 girls teams and another 8 to 10 boys teams and they either fly in or come by snow machines if they are the next village over.

Usually, we have workdays scheduled but due to a glitch, the workdays ended up a week earlier so we are going to have to have classes during the tournament. 

I usually help out throughout the tournament but this year I'll be teaching.  I may still have to help during the day so I've given some thought to how I'm going to have students complete a lesson and learn something if I have to help out.

So I came up with an idea.  If I have to work during school hours, I am going to give students a worksheet so they can choose a player and keep track of rebounds, steals, 3 point shots, free throws, etc.  I want them to collect the data so I can have them analyze it later.

I'm not sure how many students will actually record all the information. I suspect they will want to enjoy the game but I'm going to make it a 50 or 100 point assignment so they have a reason to collect all the information.

Once the games are over, I plan to have students analyze the data, create charts and prepare a report containing graphs, charts, and a summary of the players abilities based on multiple games.  Once the reports are presented, I want to divide the class into groups of four.  Each group is going to represent owners of a professional basketball team.  They are going to look through the reports to decide which player or players their team wants to recruit. 

They will have to complete a report that explains why they want to recruit a certain player.  This report should include the reasons they chose the player based on their stats.  I work with ELL students and this type of assignment helps them develop their language, learn to apply mathematics to real life and learn to do accurate data collection.

In the past when I've asked students to provide me with a short report on their game stats, I've gotten things like  I made a basket in the first quarter and then I intercepted a pass but didn't get a basket out of it.  So this would provide a perfect opportunity to help students learn more about collecting data during a game.