Sunday, December 20, 2009

A football review game

When I was reading a blog post by The Techno Tiger that describes some good review games, I was reminded of this game I developed over 30 years ago.

About this time of the year with the Super Bowl coming up, this review game is timely.

The rules for this game are simple.

The first team gets the ball on their own 40 yard line.

A question is asked of the team (next student in line for that team). If they answer it correctly they advance the ball 10 yards. If they get it wrong, it’s a fumble and the other team has a chance to answer it and get the ball at that spot.

When they get to the end zone they score 6 points. The team can then make up a question and ask the teacher (or the other team). If they stump them they get the extra point.

After a touchdown, the other team gets the ball on their own 40 yard line.

The reason we use the 40 is that a fumble on the first few questions does not give the other team a “short field” to work with, and they still need to answer 6 questions to score a touchdown.

Note: Students would often challenge the teacher for the extra point after a touchdown. We would have to study all the small details that students would ask to try and stump us. They learned a lot by digging for those details to come up with their questions.