Fantasy Sports Math League: An Innovative Gaming Approach to Increase Middle School Math Skills

Fantasy Sports Math League will be a web-based collaborative game for middle school students to learn mathematics in a real-world context aligned to the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Standards. The program will be designed to supplement in-class learning , and as an after school or summer program, or for remote learning. To play the game, students will draft real professional sports players to their team. Students will manage their team, including deciding who plays from week and who should be traded, by conducting mathematical analyses and interpreting results through formulas, functions, graphs, and data visualizations. Students will compete to be the highest-scoring team and the most accurate mathematician ("aka the MVP"). The final product will include modules for sports including football and basketball for men and women. An educator portal will provide professional development videos, lesson materials to align gameplay to required course standards, a dashboard to track leaderboards and student progress on learning standards aligned math content. A website will present cross-league competitions to permit classrooms in schools or school versus schools to compete each other to further build connections through math.