5 Resources to Make the Biggest Game of the Year a Learning Touchdown

With football’s biggest night coming up, how can you turn the event into a learning opportunity? Turns out, there’s plenty of science to be found in this popular game! From Newton’s laws and Deflategate to health and injuries, football offers plenty of opportunities help improve student engagement in the classroom.

Here are some great resources to help you incorporate the sport into your classroom:

1. NBC Learn: NBC Learn teamed up with the National Science Foundation and National Football League to create this informative video series exploring the science behind the sport. Topics include Newton’s laws of motion, vectors, nutrition, and the Pythagorean theorem.
   
   
2. TeachHub: Offering a variety of activities across multiple courses, these lesson ideas are supplied by teachers with the aim of helping their fellow teachers. This article includes an experiment dealing with the weather effects on sports, a lesson in nutrition, sports injuries, and more—plenty of great ideas for the science classroom!
   
   
3. Edutopia: Discover how woodpeckers could impact how helmets are made and a new way to teach momentum with this interesting piece from Edutopia. Additionally, this article discusses the science behind Deflategate—something New England fans became very familiar with in 2015!
   
   
4. Science Buddies: Keep your STEM students engaged in the classroom with projects such as science on the field, how to increase the odds of scoring, measuring concussion risk, and more.
   
   
5. The Learning Network: Created by The New York Times, The Learning Network offers a host of football-related science activities to engage your students. Choose from topics including anatomy and physiology, health risks associated with violent sports, and even potential health hazards for die-hard fans.

Using real-world examples like sports can improve student engagement in your classroom. Do you already incorporate sports into your teaching? If you have a favorite lesson or experiment, be sure to share it in the comments below. 

Looking to incorporate the theme of footbal into your lessons? Check out these lessons on MimioConnect® with football graphics to help teach everything from verbs to multiplication.>>