Good Game Guide

"Be a good sport" is a phrase we use constantly and almost never define.

I ran into that this spring, heading into team and league play with my games units. I could hear myself saying it, and I could see students nodding at it, and I was fairly sure that if I had stopped and asked any one of them what it actually meant, I would have gotten five different answers and a lot of shrugging. You cannot hold students to a standard they cannot picture.

So I went looking for something better than a phrase. I found it in the Multidimensional Sportspersonship Orientations Scale, a framework from sport psychology research that breaks sportspersonship into five distinct dimensions. That was the piece I had been missing. Being a good sport is not one thing that you either have or you don't. It is five different things, and a student can be brilliant at one of them while struggling badly with another.

The work from there was translation. I took each of the five dimensions and rebuilt it in language that makes sense to an elementary student, then gave every poster the same three-part structure: a title students will actually repeat, a promise they make in their own voice, and three keys that spell out what the dimension looks like in action.

Here is the full set:

🔵 Show Up & Level Up. "I promise to show up and give my best." Show Up. Try Hard. Learn From Mistakes.

🟢 Stay Classy, Play Classy. "I promise to be classy, win or lose." Win With Grace. Lose With Grace. Cheer For Good Play.

🟠 Respect The Rules, Respect The Ref. "I promise to play by the rules and trust the call." Know The Rules. Follow The Rules. Accept Decisions.

🟣 Be Fierce, Be Kind. "I promise to compete hard and care about others." Be Kind To Everyone. Play Fair Always. Look Out For Others.

🔴 No Cheats, No Excuses. "I promise to play honestly and own the outcome." No Cheating. No Excuses. No Meltdowns.

The promises are what make this set work. A poster on a wall is a rule someone else wrote. A promise is something a student says in the first person, out loud, before they play, and it gives you something far better to point at when a game gets heated. These hang in my gym throughout our games units, and they are the anchor for every conversation I have with students about competing well.

Happy Teaching!

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