Hooping it Up
By David Lamers

David Lamers livens up the winter months with a unit about basketball.

When I became a teacher, I quickly realized that one of the most valuable things a teacher can do is to make connections between students' lives and the curriculum. It's a sure-fire way to engage students in learning. In my classroom, I use the NCAA's "March Madness" basketball tournament to liven up the cold stretch between the winter and spring breaks. It's simply amazing what a plastic basketball hoop and a little creativity can do to spark interest in learning. The tournament serves as a springboard for a host of interdisciplinary lessons from geography to poetry. Everyone finds something to get excited about.

Setting the stage. After the NCAA's announcement of teams participating in the tournament, each of my students randomly draws a team to follow throughout the competition. A student may draw a big-name team that's predicted to go to the finals, or one that's expected to fall in the first round. The excitement of the selection process is great way to kick off this themed unit.

Letters of encouragement. Once students have selected their teams, they research the teams on the Internet. This makes for an excellent lesson about using search engines, refining searches and exploring websites. As each student investigates, he or she records notes about the progress of his or her team over the past year, compiles a variety of different team facts and statistics and finds the mailing address for how to reach the team.

All of this information is used to write a postcard to the team in which each student shares information about him- or herself and wishes the team luck over the course of the tournament. The students love the fact that the coach or even the players might actually read their well-wishing comments.

Mapping the madness. Students applied geography and map skills by locating each of the universities or colleges we had selected in relation to our school. A large United States map was marked with star stickers and string to identify the distance between our city and the locations of the participating basketball teams.

It was interesting for students to see what regions had more basketball teams than others and then draw inferences as to why that might be so. The mapping process also led to lessons on cardinal directions, using a compass and reading road maps.

Basketball book talk. During tournament time, I make available a number of basketball-related books from our school and public libraries. Students can browse the titles and read them when there is available time in class.

As with other literature, to help get my students interested in the themed books, I conduct book talks in my classroom. There are a wealth of basketball-related books from which to choose, and I work not only to expose my students to fiction, but also to age-appropriate athlete biographies, autobiographies, instructional books and other nonfiction material.

Practicing poetry. I let my students know that the best writers are those who write often and generate ideas before they begin. Similarly, in the game of basketball, proficiency comes only to those who consistently practice and work at their skills.

As a class, we brainstormed all of the words we could think of that dealt with the theme of basketball. As we compiled terms that related to all five senses, we developed a comprehensive list that led to incredible acrostic, haiku, cinquain and diamond poems that combined the students' enthusiasm for the poetry lesson with the expressiveness of their own voices.

Graphing the games. When students researched their teams at the beginning of the tournament, we made sure to dig for team statistics. Each student recorded the conference win and loss record for his or her own team. This data, easily obtained from most sports websites, was then inserted into a computer spreadsheet so students could compare their team with others in the conference. Once we'd completed the spreadsheet, students developed a pie chart on the computer. Not only did the graphic information have meaning to them, they were proud of having created it.

Reaping rewards. The bottom line is, most of my students love to play or watch sports and all of them enjoyed the tournament-related unit. During a part of the school year in which it's typically difficult to get students to focus, I got some of the year's best work from my class. The excitement generated from a topic for which they had a true passion was translated into outstanding classroom results.

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