10 Basketball Lesson Ideas for PE

While looking through the thousands of lesson ideas published on PE Central, we found many basketball related activities published over the past 20 years. With that in mind, we thought it might be helpful to put some of our favorite basketball lesson ideas on one page so teachers could find them easily. If you are interested in teaching dribbling with finger pads to young children, teaching the proper techniques for chest or bounce passes, or if you want ideas for teaching youngsters how to shoot a basketball, you have come to the right place! We even found an amazing, unedited, 22-minute basketball lesson that we list first!

Basketball Lesson Ideas for PE

Teaching Dribbling

• Elementary PE Dribbling with Basketball Lesson Video – Watch Elementary PE Teacher Tom Winieki teach a lesson on basketball dribbling to his 4th graders. This video will give you a great perspective on how to effectively teach the skills of basketball in a very small space. Watch how he differentiates instruction for so many children.

Grades K-2

• Feed the Frogs – Great lesson to teach children about keeping eyes up with dribbling a ball with finger pads.
• Building Dribblers – Kids work together to build a structure while working on their basketball dribbling skills.

Grades 3-5

• Card Sharks Basketball Passing – Practice chest and bounce passes using a deck of cards.
• Dribbling Beanbag Transfer – This lesson helps teach students how to keep their eyes up when they are dribbling a ball.

Grades 6-8

• Bottle Cap Basketball (Bounce Pass) – Great way to have your students practice the bounce pass. Pennies work too, but make it much harder!

Grades 9-12

• Basketball Golf – Set up a course in your gym to help students learn about shooting a basketball.

Assessment

• Basketball Chest or Bounce Pass Peer Assessment – Have partners assess each other on how well they are performing the cues for the chest and bounce pass. Written assessment can be printed and downloaded as a PDF.

Best Practice

• Morgado’s Kindness Basketball A-Thon – This is an event based entirely around basketball. Great for getting the community involved.

Bulletin Board

• Basketball History Quiz – Kids will love this interactive board that asks them to answer questions about basketball. You can design this board to feature any type of question.

Dance

• Team Building and Rhythms Dance (with Video) – Great dance, especially if you want to motivate the boys in your classes to do some dancing, which is difficult to do sometime!

We hope you enjoy putting these lesson ideas into practice over the coming months, right into March Madness!

To see more basketball-themed ideas at PE Central, visit www.pecentral.org/marchmadness.html

Refer to this Easy Guide when purchasing basketballs for your school or organization:

Fun Fact: Basketball was invented over 125 years ago on December 21st by James Naismith

Author: Mark Manross, Executive Director, PE Central