Basketball + Math = Engagement  for Upper Grades

Ready to engage your reluctant math students?

Grab a basketball-themed statistics-based activity to help students practice their multiplication, division, and problem-solving skills. These aren’t your everyday math worksheets—we’ve added exciting context to a basketball scenario to make it more engaging while retaining educational rigor.

Using U.S. Sporting Event Stats to Build Problem-Solving Skills

Students read and analyze a series of basketball statistics about school basketball team members. Using the data given, students are presented with various problem-solving situations using information gleaned from the table. Skills that students will use to complete this activity include

• Read and analyze a graph or table
• Prime and Composite Numbers
• Metric/Customary Conversions
• Multi-Digit Multiplication
• Multi-Digit Division by a single-digit
• And more!

This activity aims to practice analyzing and interpreting given information using problem-solving skills and all four operations. 

Scaffolding + Extension Tips 

Support struggling students by working one-on-one, in a small group, or with a peer tutor. You could also modify the activity to allow for calculator use. 

For students needing a challenge, ask follow-up questions or assign follow-up tasks using the information from the basketball stats data table. For example, challenge students to convert the students’ heights to inches and place their heights on a number line accurately. Another extension would be to have students analyze all of the information in the table, determine which player they feel was the overall “MVP” of the team, and explain why using mathematical reasoning. 

Are you looking for alternate difficulty levels for this resource? This resource can be easily modified for more accessible or challenging math by editing the Google Slides file!

Easily Prepare This Resource for Your Students

Use the dropdown icon on the Download button to choose between PDF or Google Slides versions of this resource. An answer key is included with your download. 

This resource was created by Lorin Davies, a teacher in Texas and Teach Starter Collaborator.