The Basics of Good Sportsmanship

So, I attempted my first group/lesson on Thursday. Of course it was one of those days at our school where everyone got hurt on the playground, meetings lasted forever and no issue could be resolved easily. BUT we were scheduled to start and so I pushed through.

I took 14 boys from one of the 5th grade classes into our office to share my wisdom on good sportsmanship. Not only have I never taught before (preschool just doesn't count really), I had the assistant principal, secretary, visiting principal and two nurses all sharing the room. No pressure at all, right? I felt like all eyes and ears were on me.

First, I made sure the boys understood who I was and why we were meeting. Many thought I just helped in the lunch room so that in itself was a great indicator to me that I needed to be more visible in the school. Then each boy shared their name and one thing about themselves they thought I should know. Things got very loud. I got a little scared I was losing them already but the assistant principal stepped in because she was trying to have a meeting. Nice to have backup!

I split the group in two so they could come up with lists of good and bad sportsmanship. There was so much to teach them about just based on this exercise. One team just couldn't make it work because they didn't have someone to lead the way. The other filled their sheet up.

Once those were presented I asked them to each visualize a time they had demonstrated bad sportsmanship and then asked them what they could have done differently. This group of boys LOVES to talk and share which is wonderful but makes it hard to finish the task at hand. So instead of having them just share I put them in pairs so they could act out a scenario together.

My supervisor walked in at this time so they performed them for her. The skits were a hit! They definitely understand the idea of good and bad sportsmanship even if in our observations they don't often use good sportsmanship at school.

We are meeting three more times and I am working in collaboration with their teacher to see how we can create real life examples of sportsmanship (i.e. half of them are sports journalists on the playground one day noting all examples of good sportsmanship, the other half the next). I am really excited to see where it takes us and REALLY happy my first lesson is over. It wasn't perfect but the assistant principal was impressed and liked it. Hopefully the boys enjoyed it enough. Now on to get more creative!