Yet often the learning activities we assign call for individual effort. Young people especially complain that they don't like doing homework alone, yet we often insist that it be done that way. By designing more team assignments, we can exploit the benefits of teamwork, where the weaker students will learn by having others help. And, of course, since teaching someone something is the best way to learn, the students who teach each other will learn better than if they were learning alone. You will still have measures of individual learning when exam time comes.
Sports are fun, exciting, sometimes thrilling, highly emotional.
Americans especially have indulged the myth that work and play are two distinct entities that should never overlap. Enjoyment of success. Playing a game provides a constant flow of accomplishments and the enjoyment of those accomplishments. Even the team that ultimately loses enjoys, say, a strikeout, a base hit, a well-caught fly ball, and so forth. Teachers should think about this stream of small but constant ego rewards.