The National Wrestling Hall of Fame and the Sports & Coaching Science program at Oklahoma State University have collaborated to develop a curriculum that incorporates the sport of wrestling into each lesson taught throughout the day (e.g., English, social studies, math, science).

For example, social studies includes a lesson over Presidents who wrestled; math lessons use multiplication and division to convert mass in kilograms and pounds; and for English, a story about male and female high school wrestlers utilizing wrestling vocabulary words.

Each lesson has been carefully constructed and geared towards students in 5th grade. The curriculum includes specific lesson plans for each subject and activities that supplement the lesson plan. All materials such as worksheets are included. The overall goal is to provide teachers with all the materials they need to effectively teaching the lesson without any additional preparation.

During the spring, this curriculum was piloted in an elementary school in Oklahoma. The content was taught over the period of a week by one teacher. However, the curriculum could be taught over a one or two-day period if the school has subject teachers.

If you are interested in offering this curriculum, we would welcome your feedback in order to continue to improve it. For example, from the feedback we have received already, we are developing the curriculum electronically by building a standalone website and incorporating video and more interaction into the curriculum.

Please feel free to contact me should you have any questions. Thank you for your interest!

Tim Baghurst, PhD
Director, Sports & Coaching Science
Oklahoma State University
405-744-4346
tim.baghurst@okstate.edu