Sports Card Family Studies!

When a junior high Family Studies department asked for help with Real World content, I added sports cards first! These classes had just become co-educational!

Careers, drafting fundamentals, sketching, design, working drawings, manufacturing processes, supporting diagrams and written explanations are all accessible from sports card contents.

Working through the grade level courses, Family Studies teachers realized how many different formats of reading and writing their students had to work through along with actually producing original work each semester.

Much of what was read or written was heavily instructional and densely layered:

Charts
Coupons
Equipment and Machines
Labels
Patterns
Phrases and Expressions
Recipes
Reviews
Surveys.

Together we found several places in these courses where sports card Family Studies sparkled.

The card serves as a visual focus for student attention as well as a springboard into a specific set of Family Studies tasks.

Set 1 Individual, Survey, Data collection, Hypothesis, Research

Choose a sports cards and record the age, height and weight of the player.
* What is the suggested daily calorie requirement for someone of this age?
* What special caloric needs does this player have? Why?
* Where can you go to locate this information?
* How does the player’s diet compare with yours?

Set 2 Individual/Small Group, Survey, Data collection

Choose a set of three or four cards from the same sport that illustrate players in different positions or action.
* Examine the photos on the cards and make notes of how the clothing is designed to assist the player’s motion.
* What special considerations are taken when creating a pattern for this sport?

Set 3 Small Group, Data choice, Community Resources, Research, Presentation, Discussion

From an individual or school team uniform, examine a sample piece of clothing similar to one you find on a sports card.
* Create a chart to illustrate your findings.
* Explain each feature.

These features may include moisture wicking, texture and weight of material, extra space for protective padding, large gussets, points reinforced for longer wear, etc.

Since many activities including reading and writing and production are common to both Family Studies and Industrial Arts, you will want to check out more sports card related teaching ideas in that subject.

Jump from Teaching Family Studies from Sports Cards over to the Menu Content hub page for a 6-part Food Menu unit and MORE!


Return from Teaching Family Studies from Sports Cards to Sports Cards hub page for even more sports card teaching ideas!


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