Creating Super Bowl Themed Games In The Classroom

As a teacher, you need to come up with ways to keep the attention and interest of the kids in your classroom. These students can have very short attention spans. One of the ways to capture their attention is by playing games. In addition to creating games for your class to play, match them up with events that they have an interest in such as the Super Bowl. The entire month of January is a buildup to the Super Bowl which allows you to try different games to capture the interests of the kids in your classroom.

Super Bowl Jeopardy

Creating a game of Super Bowl Jeopardy starts with creating point values for each question and a category. Choose six topics that have been the subject of recent assignments For each category create a question worth 2 (safety), 3 (field goal), 7 (touchdown) and 8 (touchdown with a two-point conversion) points.

After creating the game board, divide your class into teams of three players each. Each game can be a competition between three teams in the classroom. The winning team from each competition moves on to the next round of the playoffs on a playoff bracket constructed ahead of time. The final two teams compete for the class championship. Scoring for each team is a positive number of points if the team answers the question correctly and negative if it’s answered incorrectly.

The Winning Drive

In this competition, a winner is determined in a single class period. Divide your class into teams of a four to five kids per team. Teams each get one chance on offense. When on offense the team has an opportunity to roll up to five dice for their “yards” each correct answer. The first question is easiest and one die is rolled if the correct answer is provided. The questions get more difficult going up to a fifth question which allows the team to roll five dice if they answer it correctly. The team’s turn ends after the fifth question or if they have three incorrect answers before then (called incompletions). The team with the highest point total is the winner of the game for that class session.

Class MVP

In either of the above competitions, the championship team needs to determine their MVP of the Super Bowl. This means that the members of the winning team compete in one last contest. This competition is done with the teacher reading a sequence of questions with a high difficulty and awaits for all the players on the championship team to write down the answer. After each answer those that got it correct advance in the playoffs. The game continues until only one player among the remaining players answers it correctly.

These games are meant to bring the fun of football into the classroom. Making learning fun and connecting with the interests of the kids will encourage learning. Adding in the opportunity for some bragging rights or a prize adds to the classroom connecting.