Help your students learn to weigh their options before they commit with this printable game pack for Sledgehammer, a target game where a miss leaves the ball exactly where your opponent wants it!
In most target games, a miss costs you nothing but your turn.
You throw, you fall short, you go collect your beanbag, and the next player steps up to a situation identical to the one you faced. Nothing you did changed anything for anybody.
Sledgehammer takes that away. The ball stays wherever it stops, and your opponent's next shot is taken from there. Send it wide and you have handed them an easy angle. Blast it past the target and they are now kicking from thirty feet out with their back to everything. The shot you take is never just about your own score.
The target is a cricket wicket with a single stump, which matters more than it sounds like it should. A weighted base means a soft touch will not knock it down, so rounds actually last long enough for the back and forth to develop. It also means the tape line two thirds of the way up is worth going for, because a high strike has the leverage to bring the whole thing over. Three points if you can hit it up there, one point if you cannot.
🎯 Build One: Closest To The Hammer. Two balls, no target in play, just seeing who can stop their ball nearest the wicket. This is where students calibrate force, and it earns everything that comes after it.
🏏 Build Two: Knock It Down. The Hammer comes into play and the tape line arrives with it. Each player still has their own ball, so a miss only costs them their own turn while they figure out the lifted shot.
⚽ Build Three: Sledgehammer. The two players share a single ball. That one change is the whole game, because a miss stops being a wasted turn and becomes a gift to your opponent.
The three factors students are actually weighing are distance, angle, and the score of the game. Two of those they will name on their own if you ask them what made a shot hard. The score is the one that stays invisible, and it is the interesting one, because a three point attempt when you are down 8 to 2 is a completely different decision than the same attempt when you are up 10 to 4. Nothing physical has changed. Ask about it directly after Build Two, put all three on a whiteboard, and leave them up.
The pack includes the full game, all three builds with their diagrams, learning targets, discussion questions, assessment ideas, and teacher notes.
Happy Teaching!
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