From first down to fractions
Second graders turn NFL season into classroom lessons
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DAYTON -- For Taylor Sherry's second-graders at Southeast Valley Elementary School, keeping up with the NFL this fall means more than knowing which team won on Sunday.
It means adding and subtracting numbers, tracking statistics, practicing writing, setting goals and learning about teamwork and perseverance.
For the second year, Sherry's Dayton classroom is participating in NFeLementary, an educational program that uses the National Football League as a way to connect classroom lessons with real-world information.
The program has quickly become a favorite among her students.
"The students love getting to draft their own team and become that team manager all season long," said Sherry. "They get to have something that is theirs and no one else in the classroom has."
Each student drafts an NFL team and is responsible for following that team throughout the season, including tracking scores and statistics.
The class also follows the Green Bay Packers together, using actual game statistics as part of their math lessons.
Each week, students record a quarterback's passing yards, add them to his season total and use subtraction to determine how many more yards are needed to reach 1,000.
"It just adds a little extra fun when it's more than just what we find in a textbook and connecting it beyond the classroom," Sherry said.
The football theme also gives students opportunities to practice writing. Students have written letters to their favorite NFL teams, giving them an authentic reason to organize their thoughts and communicate with an audience beyond their classroom.
The lessons aren’t limited to numbers and letters. Sherry uses players and games as examples when discussing teamwork, leadership, perseverance, overcoming challenges, setting goals and not giving up. Those lessons can then be connected to situations students encounter in their own lives.
For Sherry, the idea grew out of her own family’s love of football.
"My family and I love watching football and spending our weekends watching our favorite team," said Sherry.
According to Sherry, she became interested in bringing NFeLementary into her classroom after seeing another teacher, Mary Crippen of Miami, Florida, use the program.
Crippen developed a curriculum that other teachers can purchase to help incorporate the NFL into classroom learning.
Sherry said she enjoys finding ways to connect what students are learning with things they encounter outside of school.
"It just adds a little extra fun when it's more than just what we find in a textbook and connecting it beyond the classroom," said Sherry.
And the students don’t have to arrive in August as football fans.
"A lot of the students aren’t necessarily football lovers at the beginning of the year, but by the end they are well versed in football and usually have a favorite team picked by then," said Sherry.
Sherry said she especially enjoys hearing about the students’ teams after the weekend’s games.
"Their excitement to come talk to me about it Monday morning after their team has played is so fun," she said.
This year’s NFeLementary experience also came with a special assist from FOCO, a company that produces sports apparel and merchandise for college and professional teams.
FOCO donated a team-themed bag for each student in Sherry’s classroom. The bags gave each child another connection to the team he or she selected and added to the sense that students were taking ownership of their NFL teams throughout the season.
For Sherry, however, football is ultimately a vehicle for something bigger. NFeLementary gives her students a reason to see how skills learned in the classroom can be used to understand something happening in the real world.
For this group of second-graders, sometimes the difference between practicing math on a worksheet and calculating a quarterback’s season statistics is simply finding a way to make the numbers matter.
"This has become so much more than football in our classroom," said Sherry. "It is a way to make math, writing, teamwork, goal-setting, perseverance and real-world learning meaningful, memorable and fun."