Super Bowl Gives Kindergartners’ Lesson An Extra Kick

By Andrew Rote

January brings three things with it – a return to school from winter vacation, a lot of snow, and the Super Bowl.

At Wesley Learning Center located next to the Methodist Church in Sandy Hook, the kindergarten class had been preparing for last Sunday’s Super Bowl. On Friday, January 26, they celebrated the upcoming game with a party.

Teacher Mrs Randi Rote has used football to tie in with lessons. Jesse Pasacreta explained how he learned there are 100 yards on a football field using the technique of counting by 10s.

On Friday, the students along with Mrs Rote and her assistant Mrs Donna Liska wore outfits of their favorite teams. Some of the children picked out their favorite teams especially for the party.

“I like horses and I like the emblem of the horse,” said Dena Riccio of why she chose the Denver Broncos. She added, “My dad goes to Colorado for his school.”

One of the pre-game activities the class did last week was graphing. One graph displayed on a wall in the classroom showed how many teams’ nicknames begin with certain letters of the alphabet. They found that six begin with the letter B, which is more than any other letter.

Another graph of the number of people who thought the New York Giants would win versus the number of people that expected the Baltimore Ravens to win was made. The class learned that 11 people felt the Ravens would win and only four sided with the Giants.

On Friday, the students discussed what they learned about the rules of football.

Alex Lampel mentioned that a “cuddle” is when the team members group together.

“A touchdown is when they can throw the ball so they can make a strike and score more points than the other team,” said Sam Langdon.

Michael Kraus described a field goal as, “They kick it into the net.”

Sarah Potter said that when the referee raises his hands after a successful field goal, “It means yeah!”

The students were also able to apply their Spanish unit to football, as shown by Jesse Pasacreta when he said the Miami Dolphins wear “anaranjado,” (orange). Matthew Spencer said that the Chargers wear “azul” (blue).

On Friday, the 13 students split up into groups for part of the day after eating football cake. One of the activities they did by group was creating pennants with the word “Go” followed by the student’s favorite team’s nickname. Before creating the projects, they learned about the word “Go” which is one of their sight words.

The class also learned that a touchdown is worth seven points and a field goal is three. They practiced adding by determining that a team’s score would be 10 if they were to score a touchdown and a field goal.

Mrs Rote said that the unit was easily adaptable to many academic areas. The lesson plans just fell into place.

“The kids seemed interested in the Super Bowl,” she explained how she came up with the idea for the Super Bowl unit. “I wanted to tap in on their interests and turn it into a learning experience.”

After a week of hard work, they will now be able to watch football and apply their newly acquired knowledge to the game.