National sports: Aussie Rules football

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (National sports mini-series, episode 231) is a short documentary about Australian rules football, or Aussie Rules. It starts with the day off work in Victoria for the Grand Final parade in Melbourne, the day before the Grand Final at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where about one hundred thousand people watch the last match of the year. It then explains the game: an oval ball on a big oval field, eighteen players in each team, the ball kicked or hit with the fist but never thrown, and the mark, a catch after a kick, sometimes very high on another player. It goes back to 1858, when the cricketer Tom Wills wrote to a newspaper to ask for a football club, and to the first rules a year later. It ends with footy today: families in their team's colours, small-town clubs, the women's league from 2017 and the round of matches that celebrates the Aboriginal players and their culture. The narration is in the past simple, with the present simple for today; no grammar point is taught. It is a listening comprehension episode: learners listen, then answer the 10 questions in the app: all 10 on facts. The study topic is how a sport can show the values of a society, here Australian society.

Materials & prerequisites

The folder holds the audio, the slideshow and the script; there is no lesson plan. The pupil pack and the teacher pack (answers highlighted) are one A4 page each, with the text, three pictures (a photo of players at the Grand Final parade, a photo of a high mark, a drawing of Tom Wills writing his letter), the key words and the 10 questions; a pupil sheet and a teacher sheet with the answer key come with them. The text ends with an open question (Think about it: Would you like a holiday for a football parade in your town?). Learners should know the past simple of common verbs and be able to read dates and large numbers. The pack's key words explain the new words (parade, final, match, footy, kick, fist, throw, catch, shoulder, lazy, rule, league).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged c4-encountering-others ("Rencontre avec l'autre"), Cycle 4 (4e); in the 2027 programme, axis 1 "Sport et société". The episode targets CEFR level A2+.