Do your students love football? This fun game teaches kids football skills and while giving more kids the option to hold the ball. The Game of the Week is Football Fake Out!
Group Size: 2+
Age Group: Grades 1+
Length of Activity: Less than 10 minutes
Developmental Goal: To develop critical thinking.
Equipment: Two cones and one football
Before You Start:
- Teach how to hold a football close to your side
- Split group into two teams with each team lined up on opposite base lines. Have cones placed a few feet behind the baseline marking where the single file line should start.
- Designate one side as the “Taggers” or “Defense” and the other side as the “Fakers” or the “Offense.”
- Demonstrate safe tagging:
- Light touch, like a butterfly wings, on the back or shoulder.
- Unsafe tags: hard contact that might cause the person being tagged to fall.
- Demonstrate how someone can move their body to “fake out” the person trying to tag them.
- Have a few players demonstrate for others to see.
- Make sure everyone knows which line is the “fakers” and which is the “taggers”, the roles of each, where the boundaries are at and the importance of safety.
Set Up:
Designate a rectangular play area large enough to run in. You may want to place a cone across from each other on each sideline.
How to Play:
- The objective is for the “faker” to run past the “tagger” with the football and reach the opposite baseline without getting tagged.
- The “faker” can move in any direction while making their fakes but must stay within the boundaries.
- The “tagger” is trying to tag the “faker” with two hands.
- The first two people in each line begin the game by stepping into the playing area.
- The play is done when either the “faker” reaches the baseline or is tagged. In either case the players switch lines each time and give the ball to the first person in the line the “faker” came from. Make sure the class stays in a single file line a few feet away from the baseline (not across the baseline) so the players do not run into each other.
Variations:
- This can be played without a football or with another ball
- If players are tagging safely, the boundaries can be increased and each side can have two or three players go at the same time.
- Each “tagger” can get one or both of the “fakers.”
Love implementing Game of the Week? Playworks offers professional development programs that will teach your staff to use recess and playtime to improve health and support learning. Curious to learn more? Submit the Training Assessment form and a local Playworks representative will respond directly.
