By Mikaela STONE

Valley View Elementary School second grade students enjoyed a host of football-themed activities as teacher Lisa Messineo tied in the Super Bowl with class learning to start a new tradition.

“Thematic teaching” helps students approach subjects at a new angle and bring fun to the classroom. Messineo believes that students can learn from the Super Bowl the importance of teamwork and communication, and her students invented names, colors and mascots for a fictional team. She then asked students, as a creativity exercise, what they would tell their team if they were a coach.

Messineo commented that students would be “doing [schooling] for 10 more years. We [teachers] might as well make it fun to explore.”

Students then voted for the team they were cheering for, resulting in The Chiefs winning with 16 votes– a decision that 13 students made due to their fondness for singer Taylor Swift.

These results were then graphed in bar charts and by using tally marks students saw real world applications for basic statistics and learned more about how data and math informs sports predictions. As a special treat, Crescenta Valley High School’s football coach Hudson Gossard came to teach students how he trains his players.

He taught the second graders how to throw a football and rolled a foam circle, called a tackle ring, between the lines of kids and encouraged them to hit the moving target with the football. He finally had students take turns holding the ring while other students tackled it. Finally, he finished the lesson by handing out footballs and letting the second graders perform their own touchdown dance, which ran the gamut from the children “hitting the Griddy,” a term for the dance created by Louisiana football player Allen “Griddy” Davis, to getting down on the ground and wiggling.

Coach Gossard told the students, “I don’t care if it’s football, dance or art … you’ve got to try your hardest and put that effort and enthusiasm in every day.”

The message Gossard hoped to impart on the second graders was not just about football but every part of their lives.

For him, “it’s more about the idea of working with someone … getting out and being active.”

Finally, Crescenta Valley High School graduate and former San Francisco 49er and three time Super Bowl player Tom Holmoe sent the students a video from Las Vegas encouraging them to work hard toward their dreams. Holmoe started out at Monte Vista Elementary School playing flag football. His advice for the students was to surround themselves with good people who are positive and encouraging.

Though a 49er supporter, at BYU Holmoe played football with the Chiefs’ current head coach Andy Reid and cheered on the Chiefs at the Super Bowl. This highlighted one of the lessons that Messineo hoped to impart to her students: one can cheer on their team without booing their team’s opponent.