eamwork, where the weaker students will learn by having others help. And, of course, since teaching someone something is the best way to learn, the students who teach each other will learn better than if they were learning alone. Why not let or even encourage your students to do their homework as a group? You will still have measures of individual learning when exam time comes. 2. Fun. Sports are fun, exciting, sometimes thrilling, and highly emotional. Learning experiences should provide as much fun (or at least enjoyment and satisfaction) as possible. We sometimes think that some learning tasks are by necessity boring (like learning definitions, grammar, vocabulary), but perhaps this attitude reflects only a lack of creativity on our part. Americans especially have indulged the myth that work and play are two distinct entities that should never overlap. Work can be fun; it should be fun. 3. Enjoyment of success. Playing a game provides a constant flow of accomplishments and the enjoyment of those accomplishments. Even the team that ultimately loses enjoys, say, a strikeout, a base hit, a well-caught fly ball, and so forth. Teachers should think about this stream of small but constant ego rewards. Breaking learning into small packages that can be conquered and that will in some way produce a feeling of accomplishment and success will help motivate students to go forward, even through very difficult material. 4. Active. A baseball game is not passive (like too much learning). It requires both mental and physical activity. Teachers should strive to make learning always at least mentally active and perhaps often physically active as well. The students should be responsible for producing something, rather than just sitting passively, soaking up the lecture. 5. Flexibility and Creativity. Baseball has rules, of course, but there is within those rules a large degree of flexibility, so that a player has a range of choices and strategies for a...
