Sydney, Australia – Who invented sports like baseball, cricket or tennis? How were new sports invented? When Beck Myors a Stage 3 teacher at Killarney Heights Public School posed questions like these to her class they went to the library and the internet looking for answers. They discovered that tennis may have begun in 11th or 12th century when monks began playing a type of handball over ropes and further evidence that sports were commonplace in Egyptian times.
Her next question “Do you think you could invent a new sport?” caused quite a stir in the class. More research showed that throughout history anyone or any group could make up a new sport as long as they could get others to play it!
The task Beck Myors set for her class included writing a detailed procedure explaining how the sport is played; drawing, taking photos or making a video of the sport in action; creating a newspaper account about an exciting competition at a future Olympic Games and writing an encyclopedia entry about their sport or designing a poster or brochure to advertise it. This exciting challenge was set for a multi-disciplinary unit of work to be completed over 10 weeks!
In small mixed-ability groups students brainstormed and shared their ideas. They ran them past family members and tried them out at recess and lunchtime at school. Collaboratively they developed rules, worked out what equipment was needed and set up scoring and penalty procedures. Deciding on a name took much discussion and consideration before consensus was reached.
Throughout the multi-disciplinary program students became focused on deep understanding of the different elements of a sport. Success required active construction, judgment and higher-order thinking combined with the need to be able to communicate substantively what they learned.
By providing detailed procedures, students knowledge and understanding of the task and their capacity to analysis and synthesize knowledge became clear: “Hexso Cricket, an outdoor game, played with a standard soccer ball, bases and stumps between two teams of 10 players each. The ball must be of leather, 27 to 28” and 14 to 16 ounces. The field must be 157 metres in length and 154 metres in width”.
After writing and word publishing details of each new sport, students had to decide how to sell their ideas to others and this is where Microsoft Publisher* was used. Groups designed colourful brochures about their sport for distribution in the school.
‘Myors Ball’ was an invented sport named after their teacher. The brochure this group designed and published spelt out the procedures of the game including:
The ball or your body cannot touch the net at any time
To serve you can throw the ball from anywhere
The ball cannot be hit outside the coned area
The brochure included information on rules such as you couldn’t catch the ball, swing and miss the ball, hit the ball under the net etc. It listed and explained novel moves such as the Punch, the Ice-cream scoop, the Shot-put pass and the Back-bender.
A major task for students in this unit was to demonstrate their sport in action. Using a video camera they filmed one another explaining the basic rules, demonstrating moves and playing a game. The film was downloaded to a computer and using Windows Media Player* they edited their films and added titles, effects, transitions and credits. Confident in their knowledge of the sport and their ability to show others how it worked students played their films to other classes. After the various sports were tried out by other student’s one group confidently predicted that Myors Ball would “become so famous that everyone would play and enjoy it!!”
In Beck Myors technology enriched classroom students use electronic portfolios to record, present and preserve their work for assessment and for sharing with their parents and others. Each portfolio contains examples of assignments, poetry readings, written literacy tasks and photographic records of learning activities. At the conclusion of this unit one Year 5 student recorded on their personal website that:“This year we’ve had a very interesting, but difficult Myors Ball competition. Year 5 played Year 6. Year 5 was of course superior winning by 2 points”.
