Want to engage your students during rigorous review work? A basketball classroom transformation will do just that. It is the perfect transformation for March Madness, but it works great any time of the year. Students naturally love games, so bringing in a sports twist is guaranteed to motivate your students. Here you will find some easy to implement ideas that will have your students excited and engaged.
Things to remember:
✴️ You can make your transformations as simple or as elaborate as you want. Just a few minor changes will have your students excited to be in the classroom.
✴️ You can also choose to make the transformation a one day transformation, or you can choose different skills to practice and spread out during the week.
✴️ During our classroom transformation, we reviewed grammar skills using a basketball theme to prepare for our statewide standardized test. However, you can use this same concept with just about any subject, skill, or standard.
✴️ It works well for whole group instruction, small group work, and even centers. You can use the concept with worksheets, task cards, or slides.
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1. Basketball Classroom Transformation Decor Ideas
✴️ A few themed tablecloths or plain orange tablecloths from Dollar Tree will help set the stage.
✴️ One of my favorite things to do to help build anticipation is to create or purchase a door sign that relates to the theme.
2. Props
✴️ You will need some sort of basket. (I purchased my baskets at Dollar Tree the month before Easter)
✴️ Make sure each student has their own basketball. You can either buy foam basketballs, ping pong balls drawn to look like basketballs (this is what I did), or even just crumbled paper. I suggest you number the balls, so the students know which one is there’s should it go rolling around the classroom.
3. Outfit
✴️ A striped referee shirt and a whistle is all you need.
4. Activities
✴️ You can use any task card set or worksheet you own. Set up the baskets around the classroom and give each student their own ball. As students choose the correct answers, they get a chance to make a basket.
✴️ We used the basketball theme grammar review during our classroom transformation.
- I assigned one basket for every two students and gave each student their own numbered ball.
- I projected the digital task card on the screen and gave students a moment to write their answer on their response board.
- At the count of 3, every student held up their response board.
- I then projected the answer slide on the board.
- If students got the answer correct, they had the opportunity to shot their ball to score the amount of points on the board.
- We proceeded until we went through all 25 question slides.
I hope you were able to gather some great ideas on how to implement a basketball classroom transformation for your students. Be sure to check out the other classroom transformation ideas on the blog for more easy to implement inspiration.
