National sports: Basketball

Objective & content

This Look Closer episode (National sports mini-series, episode 233) is a short documentary about the invention of basketball and college sport in the USA. It starts in Springfield in December 1891, where a teacher, James Naismith, had two weeks to find a safe indoor game for a bored class. It follows the two old peach baskets nailed to the balcony of the gym, the thirteen rules, the first game, nine against nine, and the ladder after every goal, then moves to today: university teams, the NCAA and the March Madness tournament. 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 college sport in the USA (the NCAA).

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 drawing of Naismith nailing a peach basket to the balcony, Naismith's first rules of 1892, a photo of a women's college basketball final in 2014), 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: Why do you think the students liked Naismith's new game?). Teachers may want to check beforehand that learners can understand numbers and dates (1891, thirteen, eighteen). The pack's key words explain the new words (college, bored, gym, caretaker, peach, basket, rule, score, bottom, ladder, net, league).

Curriculum alignment

Tagged c4-encountering-others ("Rencontre avec l'autre"), Cycle 4 (4e), with the episode theme sport-and-society (axis 1, "Sport et société"; study topic "NCAA, le sport universitaire aux États-Unis"). The episode targets CEFR level A2+.