The World Cup: A Fair Game?
Oxfam caught football fever during the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, creating a range of fun and creative education resources for teachers. Using the World Cup as a topical entry-point to explore issues of inequality, the activities and learning streams use the global game to help students examine and explore:
- Inequality between and within countries playing in the World Cup
- How soccer players and other people who have taken action to make the world fairer
- The news around the World Cup
- How making new rules in soccer could make the game fairer, and
- The causes, effects and solutions to inequality in Brazil.
Subjects and the Australian Curriculum
The activities help teachers to capture students’ imaginations, and weave global education in authentic and relevant ways though the subjects of English, Geography, Mathematics, PE and Civics & Citizenship.
Oxfam Australia has identified the resources, created by Oxfam Great Britain, are suitable for students at Year 7 and 8 levels nationally. Some activities may also be suitable for upper Primary School students.
We’ve also created documents showing how the English, Geography and Mathematics resources link to the Australian Curriculum at Secondary level. Curriculum relevance documents can be found here:
- The World Cup: A Fair Game? Australian Curriculum: English relevance
- The World Cup: A Fair Game? Australian Curriculum: Geography relevance
- The World Cup: A Fair Game? Australian Curriculum: Mathematics relevance
Get the resources
The full list of resources include:
Introductory materials
- World Cup Teacher’s Overview (PDF, 148kB) Provides an overview of the activities in this resource.
- World Cup Introductory Activities (PDF, 588kB) Includes an introduction to the topic of inequality, a World Cup Quiz, Top Trumps and ‘Making Money’ game.
- Introduction to the World Cup and Inequality (PPT, 1MB) PowerPoint presentation to accompany the introductory activities.
English
- World Cup English Resources (PDF, 276kB) A role play activity exploring the benefits and disadvantages of hosting the world cup, and a look at media coverage of the World Cup and inequality.
- World Cup English PowerPoint Presentation (PPT, 262kB)
Maths
- World Cup Maths Resources (PDF, 556kB) Students will use fractions, probability, percentages and ratios to compare World Cup countries.
- World Cup Maths PowerPoint Presentation (PPT, 2MB)
- World Cup Maths Statistics Worksheet (XLS, 45kB)
Geography
- World Cup Geography Resources (PDF, 2MB) Students explore inequality within Brazil and the government’s efforts to overcome it.
- World Cup Geography PowerPoint Presentation (PPT, 438kB)
Physical Education
- World Cup PE resources (PDF, 113kB) Pupils explore scenarios where soccer is unfair, think about how to change the rules to make it fairer, and put their rules into practice in their own tournament.
- World Cup PE PowerPoint Presentation (PPT, 760kB)
- PE Tournament Cards (PDF, 202kB) Use these when running your Fairer World Cup tournament.
Civics & Citizenship
- World Cup Civics & Citizenship Resources (PDF, 249kB) Pupils look at action taken by footballers and other people to make the world fairer, exploring what makes action effective.
See Oxfam GB’s full webpage – The World Cup: A Fair game?
