Nexrad

If he turned down the offer from GB he must not have liked his role in the offence.

Hello, I am a school teacher and an avid FF player. Next year I want to start he year off with using fantasy football to support arithmetic practice and to make predictions based off of collected data. I have some ideas already about what it would look like and how to create meaningful scoring for students to practice arithmetic while making decision about who to start in the next week, but am open to suggestions if you have creative ways you think that FF could support math instruction. What I would love to get from this community are personal antidotes (maybe from professionals who use math, stats, probability in their careers) that I could use, when pitching it to parents and administrators, to support this idea (or reasons not to incorporate FF). I will not share anything from this board without permission, but thought this could be a place to get the ball rolling. Thank you and have a great day!

Agreed, it is so hard for TE to make impact in rookie year. They need to adjust to both NFL caliber D linemen and NFL receiving route trees.

Yes I will be keeping an eye on Dixon on the waver wire in week 3.

Lots going on in the Chiefs backfield, and they could go RB in the draft. Too soon to guess what value Ware is going to have, but a situation worth monitoring.

They have the opportunity to reflect on the decisions they made, and decide how to adjust their choices going forward. I think that these are lessons that all fantasy players are faced with at times, because nobody make perfect predictions. We make the wrong prediction, we adjust our playing habits, and grow as fantasy players. Learning that even the best predictions can turn out to be wrong is a life lesson that can be transferred from a fantasy football game.

Thank you for the resources. About your concerns about different interests, I am working with small groups in math intervention. I have already identified the group that I would incorporate FF into first - they all come to group wanting to talk football anyway. If I were to use FF in a whole group I would make it an activity students could choose for enrichment or to extend their studies.

Fourth and fifth grade, but I work in small group setting with students who struggle with math or have fallen behind, students that need something to make math practice more meaningful.

I knew that there was the possibility of negativity from this idea, I asked for both positive and negative feelings about the project. I thought that because we are all ff players that the concept of ff in math itself would be supported but I posted on the internet, so I should not have been surprised by the backlash. I do think that there might be a valid reason, out there, to not use ff in math and I have not heard it yet I am open to people's ideas. That said I feel that I have had a lot of support and some great testimonials, that I will use to reassure parents who are worried when I launch in the fall. I'll make sure to keep the FF Today community updated with my studies progress.

I am a teacher, it comes with the territory, if I wanted respect in my profession I could have been a lawyer.

No participation trophies, just friendly competition, which is a motivating factor for my students who are good sports and compete with each other well. Also "grading" with be on if students can take the raw stats from the weekends games for a player and accurately calculate player/overall scores. For example is your quarterback throws for 326 yards and yards are worth .15 then you need to be able to multiply 326 x .15, then you need to add up all the quarterback's scoring categorizes (touchdowns, rush yards, negatives for fumbles or interceptions) to get your QB score and then add all your players to get your weekly total. Lots of great math practice in calculating ff scores by hand!

Thank you for the input, I am working with struggling math students and I do not see ff as a replacement for their math curriculum, just a fun and engaging way to practice calculations and making predictions a few times a week. My philosophy is to teach the skills then motivate the students to apply the skills. Also, thank you for your balanced view on American education. I think that teachers with their eyes open would agree that our system is not all that it could be and are willing to accept that teachers themselves have a share in the responsibility for what has gone wrong. I do my best from within the system to make sure I have my students needs and motivations at the forefront of my planning and to support/encourage my peers to do the same.

Hello, I am collecting information from players of fantasy football about using fantasy football as a math activity on a fantasy football discussion board. I never thought it would cause so much drama. But this is the internet and so now that it has I am not surprised. I am going to share positive testimonial from ff players with parents to reassure them about the decisions I have made about the education of their children. I know that I don't have all the answers so I am open to criticism of my idea, I do not, however, plan on using criticism as testimonial to parents. I see criticism as potential areas that parents will push-back against my plan, I have seen already that the concern of gambling is going to come up right away and know that I will need a response showing that ff is a game not gambling. I also think that there might be a reason, that I have not thought of, why that this is a bad idea. If a poster shares that quality reason supported with facts and convinces me that I should not use ff, I will not need to present anything to parents because I will drop the project. I have not heard that reason supported with facts, yet. You supported using baseball stats for math class and I agreed that the stats from any sporting event are what makes those sports useful as a tools in a math class, and in my math class students do not only calculate answers, they using calculations to make decisions and support those actions - like setting a fantasy football lineup. I am still open to the reason that ff in math class is not a good idea but I am not going to consider to unsubstantiated attacks. You have made it very clear that you dislike teachers and consider them lazy, you comments did not seem directed at me personally but universally to all teachers, as a teacher I take offence to your repeated insults. They may come form a place of ignorance or you may have been deeply hurt by a teacher in the past, and if this is the case I am truly sorry. Your attacks on teachers, however, have not moved me to change my mind about my project. In fact I want to employ ff into my classroom more now, so my students understand that their teachers want them engaged in learning and don't grow up hating teachers.

Right you hit the nail on the head. This is an extension of the math curriculum that will give students motivation to practice the skills from the curriculum. Thanks for sharing that resource, I had not see it.

Thank you for sharing, would you mind if I included your thoughts as a testimonial when I present this project to parents?

You have so many great ideas. Do you mind if I include some of your thoughts as a testimonial, when I present the project to parents?

From a teacher - thanks for the support and kind words!

No money involved just motivation to calculate and use data to make predictions. I think there would be lots of opportunities for information technology. Spreadsheets to collect and analyse data over time, using the search engine to find raw data and stats. What else would you suggestion to incorporate?

Sorry to not respond sooner but I had to take a break. It got a little intense on this thread. This is an activity planed for my fourth and fifth grade intervention (small group instruction). I am trying to think of the logistics still, but I know I want Monday/Tuesday to be for collecting statistics, calculating scores, and charting data, then on Thursday/Friday calculating predictions, making choices and defending choices. I haven't decided on a weekly or year long format, suggestions?

I think that any sport has statistics and numbers that can be employed to teach and practice an array of math skills, and so it is important to let students follow their interests, like your interest in baseball, and for my students, football. I think the fantasy aspect adds the opportunity to take the numbers and data you find and then make decision about what to do next. Two aspects of the Common Core State Standards for mathematical practice are to "reason abstractly and quantitatively" and "to construct viable arguments". By taking raw numbers (the stats from a sport) and using a scoring matrix for a fantasy game to create repetitive data, students can use that data to make and defend their decisions in a meaningful real world setting.

Great resources thanks! Probably to advanced for most of my students but something to build to. This series of books is closer to what ff will look like with my students.

I do math intervention for students that struggle/hate math so motivation is at the core of my teaching. I spend my planning time inventing and developing ways to make math meaningful for these students. I already have identified the common core state standards to support fantasy football for teaching so I am not worried about that angle of justification, nor am I worried about it being seen a gambling. I am now looking for ways to turn acceptance from parents and administration into support, by sharing testimonials from ff fans. I fully intent to incorporate fantasy football into weekly math activities though-out the up coming ff season. Also I know what constitutes lazy teaching, I am in and out of classrooms everyday for the last 15 years, when non-experts start sharing lecturing on the subject, I remember that opinions are not facts. I usually wish that I had the chance to teach the holders of those opinions how to develop a solid argument. I asked for both positive and negative reactions to using ff for math instruction, and would love to take into consideration well developed reasons to not use ff with my students.

Love the stock market for a real world concept to make math more meaningful, we do a whole unit with the stock market in our 8th grade math, but I am targeting a group of fourth and fifth graders who struggle/hate math and I want to meet them where their motivations are, and these kids LOVE football. If I can motivate them to learn/practice math by talking about football then win/win!

Thank you for the input. These are the type of testimonials I want to be able to share with parents. Do you mind if I use yours?

I don't know how you play fantasy but I am in paid and unpaid leagues each year. The leagues were students play in school would obviously have to be unpaid but it does not remove the challenge or mathematical thinking of the game. I am willing to look at baseball and other fantasy sports if there is interest from the students involved, and football makes a good jumping off point because of when the season starts, right at the beginning of the school year, and because my students are vocal in their interest in the sport and the game, not so much in baseball.