Are your students already talking about the Super Bowl coming up on February 11 in Las Vegas this year? Looking for a few Super Bowl themed ideas to decorate the classroom or activities to play with your class?
Ask any teacher, and the number of football jerseys and debates about who’s going to claim the NFL championship tend to take over classrooms this time of year. No wonder — football is big even for the smallest people! Take these figures from 2021 — that year, around 5.23 million people in the U.S. ages 6 and up were engaged in tackle football. Needless to say, American football is a huge part of American culture and society, and our students are just as plugged in as the adults.
With that in mind, our teacher team has been talking to teachers around the country to find out how they typically celebrate the Super Bowl in their classrooms. The actual event may be held on a Sunday night when kids are out of school, but many of you said you throw some football fun into the mix during the weeks leading up to the big game. Others said football comes into the classroom in the fall when students are engaged in PeeWee games and the high school football games are big news in the school district.
With that in mind, our teacher team has put together some of our favorite ideas from teachers around the country — plus a few of our own — soyou can feature this sport in your Morning Meetings or lessons before the big game. Read on for fun football trivia questions to challenge your class for a Fun Friday activity, Super Bowl bulletin board ideas, football-themed books to add to your classroom library and more ways gridiron inspiration from classrooms across the US.
Browse our entire U.S. Sports Collection for resource ideas beyond the football field!
When Is the Super Bowl in 2024?
Mark your classroom calendars! In 2024, the Super Bowl will be on Sunday, February 11, at 6:30 p.m. ET.
Of course, because the NFL championship game is always on a Sunday, there’s no need to worry about students being absent for this highly anticipated event … but we all know some will be dragging on Monday morning after a late night of watching the game with the family.
How Do You Explain the Super Bowl to Kids?
Many of your students may already be well acquainted with the Super Bowl as millions watch every year. But for those who aren’t, we offer this explanation: In simple terms, the Super Bowl is the National Football League’s (NFL) final playoff game. It will determine the league’s champion.
Here’s a little big game history that you can add in:
The NFL started in 1920, butthe first Super Bowl wasn’t played until 1967 when the Kansas City Chiefs and the Green Bay Packers competed for the title in Los Angeles. These days, the game is a reason for friends and families to get together to watch the football players compete and watch commercials that air for the first time on Super Bowl Sunday each year.
How Teachers Celebrate the Super Bowl at School
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, what’s going on in schools around Super Bowl time? You’re not teaching on game day, but if you’re wondering if it’s worth a little football frenzy in the weeks or week leading up to the match, we’ve got a little food for thought.
Sure, the Super Bowl can be incorporated into many subject areas just for the sake of connecting the real world happenings to what’s going on in math, science and so on. We all know that bringing topics kids are passionate about into daily instruction leads to increased engagement.
But digging deeper, there’s plenty of evidence that sports can teach students many positive skills and life lessons that will go far beyond the classroom. Other than physical benefits, sports teach students how to:
- Work hard
- Set goals and work towards them
- Respect and accept others
- Be a good teammate
- Win modestly and lose graciously
While throwing footballs inside the classroom isn’t terribly practical, you can celebrate the sport with these activities to elevate team spirit while learning simultaneously. Keep scrolling for fun ideas and activities to use with your class this year!
Super Bowl Activities for the Classroom
Here are some of our favorite Super Bowl classroom activities and ideas that teachers shared with us this year!
Play Football Trivia
Looking for a Fun Friday activity for the Friday before the Super Bowl? Or maybe your class is stuck indoors for yet another indoor recess? One teacher on our team says trivia is always a hit for Fun Friday,and we’ve made it easy to set this one up with a list of football trivia questions (and answers!) you can use. All you have to do isdivide your class into teams and have them write down their answers on a sheet of paper. The team with the most correct trivia points wins!
Football Trivia Questions (With Answers!)
- How long is a football field? (100 yards with 2 10-yard end zones on each side)
- Can a Super Bowl game end in a tie? (No, there must be one clear winner)
- How long is the NFL halftime? (12 minutes)
- How many points is an NFL touchdown? (6 points)
- Which team has the most Super Bowl titles? (The Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots are tied with 6 championships each)
- Which city has hosted the most Super Bowl games? (Miami, Florida with 11)
- How many points does a team earn for a field goal? (3)
- When was the first Super Bowl played? (1967)
- What are the letters that appear after the word Super Bowl each year? (Roman numerals)
Make Paper Footballs
This idea comes from Randi Smith, a Georgia teacher and member of the Teach Starter team! Smith says fun football origami is always a hit in her classroom, and to celebrate, we’ve made a free download to share in your classroom!Our download includes step-by-step instructions for making paper footballs.
These paper toys can also serve as interactive review tools for subjects such as math, science and history.
Practice How to Writing With a Football Focus
If you’re working on teaching your first graders how to write step by step instructions, you can bring the fun of football into the mix with one of the game’s most celebratory traditions – the Touchdown Dance!
Watch any of these videos featuring some of the game’s most iconic touchdown dances from stars like Dieon Sanders and Cam Newton.
Then direct students to write their own instructions that explain how to do a touchdown dance, step by step! Students should use sequential language to help the reader understand the process, including words like first, next, then, and after.
After students have written their how to texts, invite each child toshowcase their touchdown dances in front of the class, following their own steps!
Compete in the Mathlete Games
Want to play your own big game — math style? You could set up your own gridiron in the classroom like Virginia 4th grade teacher Brittany!
“We used our MATHLETE field to place mixed numbers in the correct places to help reinforce fractions on number lines,” Brittany explained. “I would throw my flag if a football was placed on the wrong yard. Everything we did today was team based and students worked together to score points! They were SO engaged in each activity.”
You can easily create your own classroom gridiron games with green tarps placed on the floor. Use colored painter’s tape or masking tape to mark off the various yardlines along the field.
Explore Estimation and Rounding
Want the math fun without the big field set-up?If you’re covering estimation and rounding this year, one teacher on our team likes to challenge students using numbers that relate to the Super Bowl!
For example, challenge your students to:
- Estimate the number of people who will watch the Super Bowl on TV to the nearest million.
- Estimate the number of touchdowns that will be scored to the nearest ten.
- Estimate how many people attended the last Super Bowl game. Round to the nearest thousand.
- The average half-time show is about 13 minutes long. Round this to the nearest ten.
Create a Sports-Themed Bulletin Board
Photo courtesy of fourth-grade teacher Amber of Georgia.
Thinking about a Super Bowl bulletin board this year? Georgia fourth-grade teacher Amber shared this fun football-themed bulletin board with us! You can create your own visual celebration of the Super Bowl with all of your superstar students represented by paper footballs.
Amber wrote each of her students’ names on individual footballs and used a green background to create a brightly-colored field.
Want to kick (pun intended!) things up a notch? Why not encourage your students’ goal-setting practices by creating a similar bulletin board with footballs representing individual student goals or classroom goals you’ve set together as a class?
Celebrate Reading Touchdowns
Photo courtesy of Arizona third-grade teacher Alex D.
Speaking of goal setting, Arizona third-grade teacher Alex D. also created a touchdowns bulletin board doing just that!
Set up with goalposts similar to those you’d find on a football field, the board highlights each student’s favorite book on a football. She even included the logo for her favorite football team, the NY Giants.
You can play off this idea by setting class reading goals and placing the footballs closer and closer to the yard lines. Reward everyone with a pizza party or extra recess when they’ve reached 20, 30, 40, 50, etc. total books or pages read depending on their grade level.
Create Teams and Promote Them
If you teach ELA, here’s another idea we heard and loved: Why not have them create their own Super Bowl team and create promotional materials for the team?
Break your class into small groups, and challenge them come up with a team name and cheer, plus a poster to promote the team to their “fans.”
Take it a step further, and encourage your students to draw their own team uniforms and present their creations to the whole class. They can even include which artist they’d like to have sing at the imaginary halftime show.
Share the History of American Football
Are you looking for a time-filler during the week before Super Bowl Sunday?
Here’s a short — but kid-friendly — video about the history of American football that some teachers shared with us. The video covers some fun facts even the most avid fans in your classroom might not know.
How did this sport get started? What makes it so popular today? Running just shy of 5 minutes long, this video covers it all!
This other video even gets into the nitty-gritty of the sport’s rules and you can see how many students recognize the NFL theme song.
Talk About Teamwork
Perhaps the biggest takeaways we’d like students to learn from sports are teamwork and learning to be a good sport. Teamwork is a great discussion topic for students and a time for them to share with their peers how they’ve experienced teamwork in their own lives.Use a Morning Meeting session with prompts and questions such as:
- What does teamwork mean to you?
- How can you show good teamwork?
- What makes a good team?
- Are you a good teammate? Why or why not?
- What makes a good team leader?
- How do you use teamwork in and outside of school?
Encourage your students to think about teamwork throughout the year with a positive poster or active games for brain breaks!
Create a Football Book Display
Photo courtesy of school librarian Julie Overpeck @greatlibrarydisplays and Arkansas library aide Clara Smith
School librarian Julia Overpeck found this awesome library display from Arkansas library aide Clara Smith. Her shelf presentation “Tackle a Good Book” includes titles such as Football Champ by Tim Green and Game Changer by Tommy Greenwald, complete with a real football helmet in the middle!
Check out some of these football-themed books for young readers which tell stories through football from overcoming bullying to pioneering sports journalism for women:
- Don’t Throw It to Mo by David Adler
- Unstoppable by Art Coulson
- Follow Chester!: A College Football Team Fights Racism and Makes History by Gloria Respress-Churchwell
- What Is the Super Bowl? by Dina Anastasio
- Miss Mary Reporting: The True Story of Sportswriter Mary by Sue Macy
- Legends: The Best Players, Games, and Teams in Football by Howard Bryant
- The League by Thatcher Heldring
- Pigskins to Paintbrushes: The Story of Football-Playing Artist Ernie Barnes by Don Tate
Teach Starter Teacher Tip: If you have students who struggle to find joy in reading, see if they have an interest in football or sports and use those topics to help them find sports-related books in the school library to get them hooked on a book.
Discuss the Soccer vs. Football Debate
It’s an age-old question from kids. Why do we call the game “football” when the majority of the time, the ball is in a player’s hands?
Use these downloadable differentiated texts for students to compare and contrast the games of soccer and American football. This set focuses on the following:
- Comparing and contrasting Soccer vs. American Football
- Identifying facts and details
- Organizing and recording information
- Writing an informative paragraph
