Playworks and Fair Play

A few months ago, I would have had no clue how to integrate fair play into the classroom. I understand what it is and my students understand what it is, but I was at a loss regarding how to making it meaningful. Writing is a love of mine, so being about to encourage students to write about a given topic is something I love to do. Since my 3rd grade students are still testing the writing waters, our primary focus was not on the outcome of the writing piece but the process we go through. The standards I planned to address were:

  3.W.4 - With guidance and support from adults, produce writing in which the development and organization are appropriate to task and purpose. (salient) 3.W.3 - Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences. 

Our Playworks leader has done a wonderful job teaching the students about following the rules and fair play. So in class before we even started our writing piece, we watch our mentor's video and examples and then engaged in team discussions (huddles) in order to make connections between the two. There were even connections they found in our community building prior to the implementation of a Playworks schedule at the beginning of the year. Here is what the students highlighted:

 Respect: Treating others the way you want to be treated
Integrity: What would I do if Ms. Foster was here?
Empathy: How does someone else feel?
Inclusion: Let's all play Fair play:
Follow the rules to have fun.

 Much of this was mentioned in the video as well as being taught by Coach Jen and reinforced by our awesome Junior Coaches. It made it so much easier for the students to know what to look for when they when to recess or went home for the day. 

After recess, we had 15 minutes of quiet time for students to brainstorm and discuss what was seen at recess (or in other places so long as it was recent). After a brief discussion, students recorded examples of fair play and respect in their thinking map. Once the students had solid ideas, we continued to move through the writing process right through to our rough drafts and final copies.

The best thing about this lesson was watching and listening to the students realizations that the things they learned in the classroom and during their recess/Playworks time was being practiced by an adult in the 'real world.' Many times students will go through the motions without really understanding why. I am seeing light bulbs go off in their eyes constantly! I will be revisiting fair play and respect constantly thanks to our biweekly Playworks time, however, I will definitely be checking in with random students in regards to the fun games they play at recess.

More info on PlayWorks!

Tweet to @MsFosterRm317

Fair Play

What a fun and engaging month!  We began October by talking about fair play.  I asked the students what they knew about fair play and was surprised to hear that they already knew a lot about it from playing sports.  To go deeper into fair play, I used the concept of "building blocks" to explain the ideas that related to it, such as fairness, integrity, and respect.  We went through each one and thought of an example of how we could show that characteristic.  At the beginning of the year, we focused on character traits that we could show to be good classmates, so the students were already familiar with these building blocks.  To finish our introduction to fair play, we watched Alex Rigsby's video.  My students were excited to get started right away.

The next week, we read a book about Mia Hamm called Winners Never Quit.  The students had to listen for times when she was and was not showing fair play.  They were surprised to learn that Mia Hamm used to quit whenever she lost a game.  They recognized immediately that that was not an example of fair play, but were glad to find out that by the end she learned how to enjoy playing, whether or not she won.  We practiced saying her mantra from the book: "I'm winning because I'm having fun!"  We also made a list of ways we could show fair play; we needed this list because we went straight into building marshmallow towers!  I put the kids in groups of 3-4 and gave them some uncooked spaghetti and mini marshmallows.  Their goal was to build the tallest tower that could stand on its own.  Throughout the activity, the students worked on fair play by practicing teamwork, listening to others' ideas, and sharing.  They loved it!

  

  

In our next lesson, we talked about sportsmanship.  As previously mentioned, the kids had a lot of background knowledge about this topic.  We read Sally Sore Loser and this time worked to identify times when Sally was a sore loser, and times when she was a good sport.  After reading, the students went back to their table groups and worked together to talk about different scenarios.  Each scenario had a situation in which a student could be a good sport or a sore loser.  Here's an example:

When you are playing soccer at recess, you score a goal but your friend says it doesn't count because you were out of bounds.  What do you do?

For each scenario, the kids wrote what a good sport would do, and what a sore loser would do.  They then had to write about what would happen next in each situation.  I liked this activity because it helped the kids to think about the effects of their actions in situations they could relate to.

The next week, we moved on to the topic of fair vs. equal.  We did the band-aid activity suggested in the handbook.  I gave each of them an index card with various ailments, such as a cut, a stubbed toe, a broken arm, etc.  I then made a big show of giving each of them a band-aid.  It was so funny to see the shock on their faces when I tried to cure a broken arm with a band-aid.  They thought I had lost my mind!  This led us to a discussion of equal meaning that everyone gets the same thing, but fair meaning that everyone gets what they need.  I made an anchor chart to give them a visual.  

The students also started their fair play posters this week.  They worked with a partner to make a poster that would teach others in our school about fair play.  Soon, they will be displayed in the hallway!

Finally, in our last week of learning about fair play, we completed another challenge that required students to work together.  This time, they had to stack cups into a pyramid without using their hands.  They quickly figured out that they could use their elbows, so once all groups had successfully stacked their cups, we changed the challenge to be no arms at all.  The kids worked together to use a variety of strategies, including using a paper clip and a rubber band to lift the cup.  All of the groups were successful!  We reflected on this activity by talking about what we had done to show fair play, and what we still needed to work on.

At the end of the month, we were ready to complete Alex Rigsby's challenge: write down one example of how you showed fair play, and one example of how a classmate showed fair play.  Here are some of their responses:

Fair Play in First Grade

+Anjoli Santiago    +Nate Hinze

Fair play is a perfect topic for first graders!  At this age many are still of the opinion that fair only applies to them.  This month's video and activities has changed their view however.

Nate Hinze did a wonderful job explaining what fair play means and that it could be seen everywhere, not just in sports or the playground.  After watching and discussing his video a few times, we went to the Epic! book site and read a book about playing fair.  The students were able, with a little prompting, to connect the situation in the story with the topic our mentor had explained to them.

The students then became absorbed in finding as many examples of not showing fair play as they could.  They pointed it out everywhere we went.  They found examples such as it peeking when playing hide and seek, starting early in a running race, giving a team mate the answer in our math game, and cheating on tests.  We discussed each one and how that situation could be changed to show fair play instead.  Most of them were able to come up with at least one solution to the problem behavior.

And while I was happy that they were beginning to notice all of this, I found we had one big problem.  My students only saw the behaviors in other students.  So I decided to change that.  I reminded them that our mentor's challenge was to write 2 examples of them showing fair play and told them that they could only share fair or unfair play that they themselves had done.

Sharing time suddenly got very quiet.  No one wanted to say anything so I started pointing out examples of fair play that I saw.  They loved hearing me praising them in front of their friends, and once they realized they could talk about times they showed fair play, they were on the hunt to find something to share.

And just like that things started to change.  I saw some students start to make an unfair move in a game and then stop.  Other students playing games like tag took their turn as it when touched instead of swearing they weren't touched.  When the time came to write their examples, they were more than ready.

They haven't perfected the concept of fair play and some are still struggling with it but we are working hard on it.    

 

Fair Play in the Funky Monkey Classroom

Fair Play Summary

Fair Play in the Funky Monkey 2nd grade classroom began with a quick “visit” with last year’s Athlete Mentor, Christian Taylor.  We watched his video about Fair Play and got ready to rock this month’s challenge! Viewing the video was especially fun for my kiddos with siblings in last year’s class.

The book Tops and Bottoms by Janet Stevens was a fun way to discuss what fair play DID not look like.  It was great to have the kids recognize that both the hare and the bear were making unfair choices.  As a group we talked about other ways the characters could have resolved their conflict. Next, we completed a close-read of a short story called “Tag! You’re It!”.  In this story several children are playing a game of tag and  come into conflict when some new children ask to join the game.  In addition to our usual text-coding, we highlighted when we came across an example of fair play in the passage. After reading we responded in our journals to the following question: What is fair play? Give an example of fair play and one of unfair play. It was great to link this idea to our daily playground recess time.

The following week we watched Adam Page’s Fair Play video and then we held a Minute-to Win-it Tournament!  We started with:

Cup Stack Challenge: 

Two players started with a stack of 25 red cups with one blue cup at the top of the stack. Both began by moving the top cup to the bottom of the stack, and continuing to move cups from the top to the bottom until the blue cup was back at the top of the stack.

Penny Stack:

Players from each table team stacked 25 pennies in under a minute using only one hand. Some students needed to hold their hand behind their back to keep form using two hands.  That whole “integrity thing” came into play!

Cookie Face:

This was  a great game to wrap up the tournament  because all of my students could compete at the same time. Each player placed a cookie on his/her forehead, and worked toward the goal of getting the cookie into his/her mouth using only facial muscles (in 1 minute or less). No hands! This was tougher than we expected but very funny to watch!

Our tournament wrapped up with another journal reflection and a brief awards ceremony.   I expect the words “make sure you play fair” to be used in my classroom well into June!

Make sure you check out our Fair Play video! 

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc9wmlC8XvA&feature=youtu.be

Standards Addressed in this Challenge:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.3

Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.6  

Acknowledge differences in the points of view of characters, including by speaking in a different voice for each character when reading dialogue aloud.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.8

Recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.

Fair Play

Hello,

This month’s topic of fair play couldn’t have come at a better time for myself.  I was sitting down during my prep just waiting for science to start and I decided to watch Brad’s video on fair play.  As soon as I saw this video I knew I had to show it to the students.  Holy Rosary Community School is one of smallest schools in our school division and our extra-curricular teams are based on a high percentage of our student body coming out and making those teams.  As further we got into the playoffs the more my students started to argue and fighting amongst themselves.  What was happening was that they were feeling pressure as a team that they haven’t felt before.  This was also affecting their personal relationships in the classroom.  I was seeing behaviours from students I never seen before. 

            I introduced this lesson to the grade 7/8’s by playing the quote from the movie “Rocky” on how winning is done.   We talked about how sometimes in life we might fall short of our goals but it doesn’t mean we give but keep working on it.  Once we saw the video we had an amazing open dialogue as a class on what was going on and how we were feeling as a class.  Although this was extra-curricular based we still were able to apply it with what was going on in the classroom.  We talked about his medals and how it was his team that won the medals and not just him.  We discussed if a team looses or win it is a team effort and not the result of one individual.  We also talked about his bronze medal and how they were favored to win gold and that his team fell short of their goal, which meant they just had to work harder next time. I also delivered this lesson to grades 1-6 although I didn’t introduce the other classes with the Rocky quote.  

            We than discussed what fair play looks like.  This is where we created the monthly assignment.  I got each student to draw an illustration of what fair play looks like, had a lot of great ideas I would like to share down below.