Fair Play in Grade 2S at PPS

Fair Play is such an important part of life, whether it's at home, in the classroom, or on the playground, After watching +Justin Snith and +Tristan Walker's video, the children realized that respect is a huge part of  fair play. The children used their background knowledge to brainstorm examples and non-examples of fair play.

We read mentor texts Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns About Sportsmanship by Howard Binkow and I've Won, No I've Won, No I've Won by Lauren Child. The students really enjoyed these books and were able to relate situations in the text to examples in their own life. I then read several stories from Brad Herzog's Inspiring Stories of Sportsmanship. One that really impacted my students was the story of  Sara Tucholsky, the softball player that hit the only home run of her career, but was unable to run the bases after hurting herself at first base. The opposition then carried her around the bases, knowing that this meant a loss for them. We then watched the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttkBP2XDZvE, What an amazing display of sportsmanship!

Keeping with my baseball theme, the children wrote what fair play meant to them, as well as an example of a time that they showed fair play.

The children are now working on skits about fair play as a culminating activity. The children are acting out different scenarios, with the children first showing how children might react when they aren't showing fair play, followed by how the scenario might play out when fair play is demonstrated. These skits will be posted soon!

Fair Play

We started our discussion about fair play by watching Lex's video. The students were really engaged and enjoyed learning about the rules for long jump. They also thought it was interesting Lex has to wear a blindfold. After watching the video we had a short discussion about what fair play means to them. They said fair play means not cheating, following the rules, and being a good sport (win or lose).

I wanted to challenge the students to think about situations they might encounter on the playground, so I provided the following situation: "You are playing kickball and someone kicks it really far. They run around all the bases and run to home. As they are running home your team throws the ball to home plate. There is a close play at home plate and an argument develops: your team thinks the kicker is out, but her team thinks the kicker was safe. How can you solve this problem?" One solution that is popular at our school is using rock, paper, scissors to determine the winner. This is a conflict resolution strategy taught to all students at our school from the Playworks Program. It's a really effective and simple strategy! The students agreed that solving the problem this way would be the best solution, so they could focus on playing more kickball!

We finished our lesson with a two part activity. Part one was creating a skit to show how students can play fair. Each student wrote their own skit (which allowed everyone the chance to think about how they can play fair. In their skits student showed how to resolve conflicts, how to go to an adult for help, and how to encourage others to play fair. After writing the skits, students drew a picture that showed someone playing fair.

Standard:
CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.1
Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and information.

October Fair Play lesson

October Fair Play lesson

Fair play is an important topic to my students. We have already had several recess and gym class issues with students who choose to “play by their own rules.” They were excited to learn more about how to play fair and improve their sportsmanship.

Here is the link to my Google Slides presentation that we used for our Fair Play lesson:

Fair Play lesson

It includes some of my favorite quotes on fair play as well as links to the following examples of fair play:

• Jack Sock shows great sportsmanship during Hopman Cup (video).
• Fair play awards recognise true Olympic champions in sportsmanship (article and video).

After viewing and discussing the video examples, students did a value line activity.

We had some lively discussion, especially around the one item: Cheaters never win. Some students thought that it was possible that cheaters might win if they weren’t caught, but all agreed that if someone isn’t playing by the rules when they win, then it really isn’t a true victory.

Our athlete mentor, Arianne Jones, talked in her video about how individual athletes compete against each other, but can still show fair play and good sportsmanship by training together, cheering teammates on, and building each other up with encouragement, rather than putting each other down. Thanks for these helpful tips, Arianne!

I love this graphic that I found on on the webpage for Coach van Gaalen from International School Manila:

From http://vangaalenj.ism-online.org/tag/sportsmanship/

Next week, we are doing our skits about fair play. We will choose our best skits and put them into a video to share with you all. Until next time, keep your stick on the ice and play fair, everyone!