Teaching Math In The Middle Of Regionals

I work for a school district that covers quite a bit of territory and must fly students from one school to another so they can play.  Most of the students in this district are 1A while the school I teach at is 2A.  Every year 1A regionals move from school to school and this year, it is being held at my school.

This means for one solid week, there will be games running from early in the morning till fairly late in the evening.  Everyone will be helping out in some way and I'll end up volunteering to do books at various points throughout the tournament.

I struggled in the past on how to teach math to students while huge tournaments such as this were happening.  Most basketball players want to watch the games so they can observe those they will have to play against.  They'll want to look at plays, who throws the most 3 pointers, defensive formations etc.  So if I don't take them, they will take extremely long bathroom breaks or not even come to class at all.

I ended up developing a project for students to do during situations like this.  Before I take the students to the gym, I pass out a worksheet designed for them to select one player in the game they will be watching.  They have to mark down two point and three point attempts and completed ones.  They also have to keep track of steals, rebounds, etc so at the end of the week, they will go through and analyze all the data.  They will turn the data into a graphical representation.

Then they will select their favorite player in the NBA and compare the stats of the players they chose to the stats of the NBA player and determine if the student has the potential to be in the NBA.  They will have to select at least one player for the next part of the project.  Students will pretend they are offering potential players to be drafted by the NBA.

The student needs to take the stats, graphical representation of the stats, and create a sales pitch for their player.  They want the NBA to draft their player so the presentations must be good and they must meet certain criterial. The three main stats students must complete are field goal percentage for two and three pointers, effective field goal percentage and true shooting percentage because these do require math and are important.

Furthermore, they can compare the number of completed two and three point shots to the averages to see if they match up.  The average for shooting a 2 point basket is at 46 percent while the 3 point basket is around 37 percent. If the player is within 3 feet of the basket, the percent of baskets can be up around 74 percent.

I plan to sneak in some of the stats I'm required to do in this project because most of the stats do not fit with anything else in the course and this is a real life application of them.  It will make it much more interesting for the kids and they may not realize they are meeting standards.  I will let you know how it goes.  Let me know what you think, I'd love to hear.  Have a great day.