Teaching: Sports Page Homework Assignment

Dick Moss, Editor, PE Update.com

The sports page in your local newspaper can provide interesting material for physical education homework assignments. You can also use sports page homework to reinforce material being taught in other classes.

Here are some ideas you can use.

Sports/Fitness/Phys-Ed Ideas

Read a story about a sports competition, list one strategy/tactic and three sports skills that were used, and describe how they affected the game's outcome.
Read a story about a local league competition (i.e. men's baseball league game). Describe how the game contributes to the participants' health and well-being. Describe some of the potential safety or health risks.
Read the box scores in the paper and compare the health benefits of the sports described.
Speculate on the conditioning activities used in two of the sports described on the sports page.

Math Ideas

Draw graphs illustrating the win/loss records of teams in the box scores section.
Calculate a team's winning percentage based on win/loss statistics shown in the box score section.
Count the number of stories in the sport section and categorize them according to sport. Calculate the percentage of coverage by sport (for example, 50% of the sports page was devoted to hockey).

Grammar/Writing Skills

Write 10 synonyms for words found in the sport section.
Find 10 action verbs and 10 proper nouns.
Re-write five sentences using a different tense.

References:
1. Lanna Bishop, Paul Bishop & Ron French, “Newspaper homework to achieve knowledge objectives in physical education.” The Physical Educator, Spring 1994.
2. Neil Schmottlach and Jerre McManama, Physical Education Activity Handbook (12th Edition), Benjamin Cummings Publishers, 2009.

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