7 Super Bowl Lesson Plans and Resources for the Classroom

After the New Year, there's likely a bit of Super Bowl energy and excitement running through your classroom. Luckily, there are plenty of great ways to wrangle those murmurs and turn them into teachable moments. If you're looking to incorporate the Super Bowl into your lessons in the coming weeks, here are some of my favorite football resources from around the web. There's a little bit of every subject -- from media studies, to math, science, and the arts.

• Ideas for Teaching the Super Bowl Across the Curriculum: The Learning Network provides fun and interesting ways to bring the excitement of the Super Bowl into the classroom in this resource. There are ideas for all the different subject areas, including history, language arts, and science. Topics like Super Bowl history and football economics are covered, and links to useful content from The New York Times are included.
   
• Videos: The Science of NFL Football: These insightful and engaging video lessons feature several lessons for students, covering topics like geometry, nutrition, and Newton's laws of motion. On the newly launched Gooru Learning website, there's also a great list of accompanying lesson plans. For more sports science videos, check out ESPN's collection.
   
• Super Bowl Mania -- Creating Cross-Curricular Lessons That Score Big: Although this Scholastic article was produced for the Super Bowl in 2012, the ideas can be easily updated. Here, author Addie Albano provides ideas for math, language arts, science, and geography lessons framed around the Super Bowl.
   
• Learning About Music With Touchdown Songs: This lesson plan, featured on ARTSEDGE from The Kennedy Center, provides a fun way to learn about music through the prism of football. The lesson is designed for students 12-18 years old and covers marching band fight songs, half-time sounds, and music from NFL Films.
   
• Learn About "the Best" Super Bowl Ad: During the Super Bowl in 1984, Apple launched the Macintosh personal computer with its famous "1984" commercial. Using the ad as a starting point, this lesson from ReadWriteThink provides classroom activities, related resources, and other sources to start a larger discussion about advertising. Another great source for exploring Super Bowl ads in class comes from Frank Baker via MiddleWeb: Teach Media Literacy With Super Bowl Ads.
   
• The Best Sites Where ELLs Can Learn About the Super Bowl From Larry Ferlazzo: Blogger and educator Larry Ferlazzo has been updating this list for the last few years, and there are plenty of valuable links throughout. Included in the list are links to podcasts, articles about Super Bowl history, and Super Bowl ads. There's something for every classroom.
   
• Top 12 Super Bowl Related Activities for the Classroom: This TeachHUB resource from a few years back provides 12 great ideas for incorporating the Super Bowl into classroom lessons. There's a wide range of ideas, from nutrition lessons to commercial analysis and writing projects. Also, Super Bowl Curriculum Connections via TeachHUB and Super Bowl Blitz: Football-Related Activities via Education World offer even more fun ideas to share with students.

More From Edutopia

• #DeflateGate, a Super Bowl STEM Lesson (Edutopia's Community), by Ainissa Ramirez (2015)
• Five-Minute Film Festival: The Science of Sports, by Keyana Stevens (2014)
• Using Football to Teach Financial Literacy at Middle School, by Brian Page (2014)
• Using Football Science to Tackle STEM Education, by Ainissa Ramirez (2013)