I've found a few more resources/lessons that use the Super Bowl or football as the jumping point for the lessons and wanted to pass them on:
Education World - http://www.educationworld.com/a_lesson/lesson096.shtml - lessons for art, social studies, math and science based on football and the SuperBowl
Lesson Planet - http://www.lessonplanet.com/search?media=lesson&keywords=football&commit=Search&grade=All+Grades&rating=3&gclid=CIGYpP73tZ8CFQUhDQodKC2r4Q - Football lesson plans
Football Math - http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/3150
It's almost Super Bowl time! Appointment television at it's best with the thrill of the game and the fun of the commercials! Why not use this important social event in American culture to pull students into learning?
What has caught my attention the most right now is the use of commercials in the classroom. Several websites have collected the "Best of the Best" of Superbowl commercials from over the years. You can search by year or by product to choose attention grabbing hooks to your classroom.
Commercials can be hooks into your assignment, examples of what students can create themselves, or elements of it can be analyzed to illustrate what is happening in the classroom.
Take this Coca-Cola Commercial:
Science teachers could the laws of physics that were involved in moving the bottle and the insects that were used and what natural characteristics of that insect made it useful for each step of the heist.
Watch a propoganda ad to discuss what techniques were used to make their point.
Look for persuasiveness in an ad to see how you could use those techniques in your writing.
Any subject can have students make their own commercials based on what they are studying. A few ideas are:
Ad for why the Constitution is important today
Show an M&M commercial and talk about the personification of the candy. Apply that to the study of chemical elements. Give your element a personality and it's own commercial.
http://www.superbowl-ads.com/index.html - Also based on year, the display of these ads are smaller and they cannot be embedded, but they do not have the related videos at the end of each one.
I ran across this and thought I would share. Using Wordle to create posters and original pieces had never occurred to me! She also links to other sites and ideas at the end of the presentation as well as includes how she created some of the slides. It is worth checking out!
I recently polled my staff on various technology training topics. Surprisingly the most requested training was on Skype and webcams. What is the hook with Skype and how can it be used in education?
I started putting together a wikipage on the ins and outs of Skype and uses. I can see how this can make a difference. Today I was researching through my PLN on twitter and ran across a presentation by Robert Marzano who was emphasizng the need for feedback and how interactive whiteboards and clickers helped provide that for students. This got me thinking about how vital videoconferencing could be on doing the same thing.
Student could connect with others, explain learning, and perform a band piece to an expert and get immediate real-world feedback on their learning. No longer are they doing the work for the teacher to see, but for a real person that they can see and talk to. I am getting more excited about Skype.
Using Google Earth in classrooms sometimes mean making your own trips to guide students through valuable resources and avoiding the distractions. It can also mean that the students create the tours and learn the process of designing a trip for their classmates. Our 7th Grade students are going to teach the class about the Texas Revolution by presenting their research through placemarks in Google Earth. The teacher is going to use the placemarks to teach the class about the different events in the Texas Revolution.
Student and teacher need to know the basics of placemark creation to get started in this process.
Here are some basic instructions to get you started:
