Sportsmanship On and Off the Court

For November, the students are learning to navigate with challenging circumstances that they may face in life. A great way to introduce this concept is to learn about sportsmanship and the proper ways we can win and lose. As high achieving student-athletes, failure and loses can be difficult to experience; however, as we know, you cannot experience a rainbow without a little rain. To use these experiences and turn them into learning moments, we must learn about how we can be positive sports whether we are on or off the court.

To begin our learning for the week, we discussed pretend scenarios that could potentially occur on the court such as a match between two peers and how one could properly respond when they are met with a loss. All the students identified that "throwing your racket on the floor and stomping away" reflected a tantrum—in their words! This initial conversation demonstrated that the students already had prior knowledge about the behaviors embodying a good sport, which was a great segue into this video where they watched about examples of good and bad sportsmanship during the 2016 Rio Olympics

Our K-3 students, who have had many experiences in their classrooms with the Howard B. Wigglebottom stories, also watched how Howard B. Wigglebottom learned his lesson about being a poor sport to his teammates, and how that negatively affected his performance.

We took these examples and created a chart identifying the traits of a good and poor sport. In this activity, the students engaged in interactive writing where I shared the pen with them so they could contribute their own ideas in their own writing.

To demonstrate that we can take these ideas and apply them to our own behaviors, the students collaborated in pairs and groups to create skits that would reflect poor and good sportsmanship behavior.

To evaluate their learning, the students worked on a pop quiz requiring them to recall everything we have discussed pertaining to sportsmanship. Their answers were so diverse yet they all displayed the knowledge we've collectively gained.

As a fun way the students could directly engage in their learning and apply what they've been learning, they were given the opportunity to play a game where they would try to collect as many scarves from other players. They had a blast and begged to play more rounds! The students also picked a favorite athlete to research, exploring their athletic journey and the sportsmanship they demonstrate in their work.