Football fans wait all week for Sunday night from September to January every year. But there’s something extra special about one Sunday night in early February when the best of the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC) get together and battle it out for the Lombardi Trophy. Get your students engaged in their studies by planning Super Bowl classroom activities for every subject.

• Teach science concepts with Super Bowl classroom activities
• Practice literacy skills with football-themed reading activities
• Discover the history of the Super Bowl in social studies

[Teach science concepts with Super Bowl classroom activities](id-sci)

Football is more scientific than you might think! Have students explore scientific principles and disciplines through football with these great resources: 

Learn more about physics through football

Discover the science that propels Super Bowl champions to victory with resources that cover topics like:

• Newton’s three laws of motion and how they influence the world around us both on and off the field.
• How impact location and velocity can affect the severity of collisions in football.
• The perfect way to throw a football.

Discuss why brain injuries are a concern for football players

Sports injuries are a common occurrence for both youth and professional athletes alike. Learn more about the science behind brain injuries by exploring resources like:

• A news clip about concussions in young athletes.
• An article that explains how seemingly harmless head hits can still cause lasting brain damage.
• An activity that uses the engineering design process to create different football helmets or gear designs that could help prevent both minor and serious brain injuries for athletes.

See how engineering is making the game safer for athletes

In a 2024 playoff game between the Miami Dolphins and the Kansas City Chiefs, quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ helmet cracked in -4 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures after a hit.  But according to experts, the helmet did exactly what it was supposed to do. Students can become product designers for a day by exploring the following lesson:

• Watch a video that explains the Design Thinking Process.
• Read an article about Mahomes’ helmet-shattering incident.
• Extend the lesson by asking students to use the Design Thinking Process and a flowchart worksheet to improve a product they use often.

[Practice literacy skills with football-themed reading activities](id-ela)

Dive into fictional and nonfictional worlds that have football as a main theme with these Super Bowl ELA resources: 

Try a Super Bowl essay writing challenge

Make essay writing more exciting by including the big game. Use the following lesson to get students thinking and writing about the qualities of a great football player.

• Ask students to think about the question, “What does it take to be great at football?”
• Share an interactive video about how to explain and elaborate on a claim in a paragraph.
• Have students explore additional articles about football and its players to collect evidence to support their claims.

Have a Super Bowl-sized sports debate

Teach students even more about arguments and claims by engaging in a football-themed debate leading up to the Super Bowl. Choose from topics like:

• Should contact sports be banned?
• Should college athletes be compensated?
• Are esports really sports?

Discover how women are changing the face of the NFL

The U.S. has a professional women’s football league, but it doesn’t get as much attention as the NFL. That doesn’t mean women don’t play a role in advancing the sport. See how women athletes and coaches are changing the landscape of the NFL with the following resources:

• See how U.S. Women’s Soccer player Carli Lloyd kicked a 55-yard field goal and what that could mean for the future of female kickers in the NFL.
• Read about Toni Harris, a Detroit woman who has dreams of playing in the NFL.
• Have students use a Venn Diagram to compare Carli and Toni’s football experiences.

Demonstrate what teamwork looks like

Teamwork is an abstract concept that can be difficult to understand. Yet it’s one of the most important parts of sports—especially football. Students can learn the true meaning of teamwork with the following lesson:

• Ask students to consider the question, “Why do you think it’s important for people to work together and support each other?”
• Assign the Aesop fable “A Bundle of Sticks” about a father who used one to teach his sons about harmony and unity.
• Extend the lesson by creating a craft stick demonstration to show how a bundle of sticks is stronger than individual sticks. Turn it into a steam lesson to see who can build the tallest, strongest bundle.

Introduce students to books with football as a central theme

See how football culture influences literature by exploring these engaging novels and book studies:

“Friday Night Lights” by H.G. Bisinger

This nonfiction book study covers the tale of the 1988 Permian High School Panthers football team in Odessa, Texas, and their journey to the Texas state championship. Use the unit lessons to build background knowledge and dive deeper into historical and social contexts like: 

• Race and sports
• Gender and sports
• The future of football

“Before the Ever After” by Jacqueline Woodson

What happens to professional football players after they retire from the NFL? Jacqueline Woodson explores one path in her novel “Before the Ever After.” Use this novel study to build background knowledge about the author and themes discussed in the book, such as friendship, family, and life after professional sports.

• Watch Jacqueline Woodson’s TED Talk about how reading slowly helped her become a better writer.
• Discover how soon experts think is too soon to play tackle football and what it means for brain injuries earlier in life.
• Read an article about how finding and keeping close friends can have a positive impact on health.

[Discover the history of the Super Bowl in social studies](id-ss)

Look back at what makes the Super Bowl one of the can’t-miss sporting events of the year and some of the most interesting moments from recent matchups:

• Get the recaps of recent Super Bowls and have your students predict who could win Super Bowl LVIIII.
• Discover how the Super Bowl’s halftime show became just as popular as—if not more popular than—the game itself.
• Read about the introduction of the forward pass into American football and how it transformed the game into the sport we know today.

Host a reading Super Bowl in your classroom

Bring the big game right to your classroom with the Newsela Independent Reading Challenge! This monthly, gamified event encourages students to practice literacy skills on their own by reading about topics that interest them. Students can earn badges and tokens for completing the associated quiz and Power Words activities on articles included in the challenge. 

If you’re not a Newsela customer yet, sign up for Newsela Lite and get a 45-day free trial of all our premium and differentiated content and activities—including access to our Independent Reading Challenge—to help you plan more exciting activities for the second half of the school year.