Sports are a popular following outside of school by many children. With a few of the children I work with professional sports an outlet for them to spend time with family and friends following a particular team. In the middle of the winter I had one of my students who was really struggling with math tell me for 20 minutes all about the Chicago Bulls. He was able to tell me the scores and bios of many of the players but when it came time for Math he would not want to spend five minutes working on math problems. So I figured why not incorporate his passion into the lesson to help him learn the standards we were teaching in class. We created "box score basketball". After each game the Bulls, his favorite team, played we did math problems associated with the 4th grade math standards but with the box scores from the previous game. Below is an example of things we would work on. How many points were scored by a certain player using the shot chart?
Other questions the student would be presented with a box score with a quarter from each team missing and he would have to find the missing number.
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
T
|
29
|
|
26
|
24
|
101
|
|
|
|
|
|
20
|
26
|
|
32
|
106
|
With the Chicago Bulls season coming to a disappointing end a few weeks ago we put away "box score math" and we turn our attention to baseball. This week we will be starting a mini fantasy baseball unit focusing on Fractions. It is important for us as teachers to remember the strengths and interests of the students to help push the students forward at times of struggle.
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