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: