We’ve all been treated to a feast of sporting excellence this summer with football’s FIFA World Cup held in Brazil in June and July and the triumphs of our athletes in the Glasgow Commonwealth Games in July and August. Next year we’ve got rugby’s world cup and the start of the qualifiers for Euro 2016.
Whilst we cheer on our sporting heroes in these international competitions, we mustn’t forget to look closer to home and our own personal heroic attempts to beat the odds and win, or to pluck victory from the jaws of defeat in the sports we play, either individually or as part of a team.
There’s rarely such drama, excitement and passion seen as in that moment of triumph or despair and in these activities, as part of our Love Sports competition this autumn, your pupils can relive some of sport’s most thrilling moments including their own.
Suitable for: Year 2 to Year 6
- Writing for different purposes
- Recognise the style and vocabulary of emotive writing and use it in their own work
- Recognise how information can be presented in a variety of forms
Begin the activity by talking about moments in sport that the pupils can remember. Possible suggestions are:
- Andy Murray winning Wimbledon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PYyEDl1bJk
- Mario Gotze scoring the winning goal for Germany in the 2014 World Cup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRfVVLdpzLw
- Beth Tweddle winning Olympic Bronze at London 2012: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQO0nTOyw6E
- David Beckham’s goal against Greece: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t0GESlaVNdE
You can use some of the footage from YouTube to remind the pupils of the events. Ask the pupils if they can describe the reaction of the sportsperson when they win, or score the goal or complete the event successfully. Make a list of the words they use such as ‘excited’, ‘elated’, ‘over the moon’, ‘grateful’, ‘emotional’ etc. Sometimes in the video you’ll only hear the spectators but at other times you’ll see them.
Extend the activity to thinking about the reaction of the crowd or the sportsperson’s team mates. Are the words they would use any different? If they think they would use similar words, why do they think this is? Now ask them to think of a time they were in a school sports competition and achieved great success. Tell them that it doesn’t have to be about winning; it’s also about taking part and making the event enjoyable for the spectators as well. The event could be a sports day, a football or netball match, a swimming gala or a competition outside of school. Did they share any of the emotions of the professional sportspersons?
Prior to this activity, ask the pupils to collect pictures from their favourite sports from newspapers and magazines (It’s often useful to have some spare football, rugby, horse riding and maybe athletics magazines on hand on the day just in case!). Use an appropriate size piece of sugar paper; A2 should be perfect, and, laying it out landscape, get them to stick the pictures of their sportsperson/s or team on one side and either a picture of a crowd of spectators on the other or draw in a crowd. Now add speech bubbles filled with the words and phrases you collected in Activity 1. Display the finished articles in class.
At the 1988 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, Whitney Houston sang one of the most memorable and inspirational Olympic theme songs ever, ‘One Moment in Time’.
This autumn, our Love Sport competition sets out to celebrate our individual ‘Moment in Time’ by asking pupils to write about a sporting highlight in their life; whether it was something they had done themselves or something their sporting heroes had done. The prize for the best entry is to have Olympian Beth Tweddle visit your school. Ask the pupils to think of their favourite sporting moment, either that of their hero or a sporting achievement they’ve done themselves. They can use any format as long as it is written, including a comic strip, a story, a sports report or a play script. Encourage them to use the words they collected in the first activity to add emotion and realism to their work.
No doubt your class will come up with some brilliant ideas but if you want to encourage collaboration between year groups you could ask older pupils to act as sports reporters and prepare a series of questions they will ask of younger pupils. Then, when they have collected the information they need, they can write a sports report and, when complete, read it to the younger class and perhaps ask for feedback to help them improve it.