Earlier this summer, Anna Letts and Lee Garlick visited Hartwell Primary school as part of their 2 week cross-curricular World Cup extravaganza. The year 6 class took part in various football themed activities, covering aspects of literacy, drama and geography.

After a quick 'getting to know you' ice breaker, students worked in pairs to look at anagrams of different World Cup players and find as many words from the letters as possible.

Using a huge floor world map and google maps, the class identified which country each flag came from and placed it on the map. They discussed continents, flag similarities, compass points, interesting country and football facts.

The majority of the day was spent putting together a World Cup poster presentation. Groups of four were asked to research country, player and football facts using the internet and non-fiction books from the library. They used their reading skills such as scanning to find key information from websites and thought about how to refine their research skills. The posters turned out very colourful and eye-catching. After lunch, the groups did a presentation on their country and player to the rest of the class. This was all about speaking up and confidently in front of others as well as passing on facts.

Then came a drama session where pupils acted out scenarios that could happen in World Cup stadiums. These included fake tickets, arguing fans, lost children and stewards/police taking charge of the situations. The class were certainly entertaining actors and were very convincing in their roles, showing their comedy skills.

In groups, the students staged a press conference whilst acting in the roles of players, managers, referees and reporters. They really identified with the players and asked some awkward questions in their interviews. These were recorded on flip video cameras.

Here are some comments from the pupils on their day:

Josh "This brings us together as a group. We have to complete a project, we have to work together to put in ideas and get it done."

James "I have learnt that there are more teams in the world cup and now I know where they come from. I have learnt most of the flags."

Lani "I have learnt a lot more about the world cup and lots more about football. I have enjoyed it because I like to do lots of sport and learning about sport. I play football at school."

James P "I want to do this again because it feels fun and different to an ordinary day. I have been working quite hard, I know quite a lot about football from my family."

Catherine "I quite like the project because I like being creative and I like playing football as well."

Fiona "I quite liked the map thing as I had never heard of some of the places. I now know where they are on the map."

Aston "I liked the one where we had to name the continents and put the football teams in the right place on the map."

Izzy "I liked looking at the map and working all together. Working with different people on different tables, getting to know people, we don't normally do that. I'm not much of a football fan so it was good to learn about the different players and teams."

Max "I have been doing lots of work using the computers, it has been very educational because of the geography and the maps."

William "I learned about where the countries were on the map for the world cup. Working in a group is a little bit annoying but then we talked about the problem and sorted it."