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Literacy through sport - using sport to inspire writing

  • by: Anna from Pobble
  • On: 17, Jun 2021
39 min read

How do you get children to be motivated to write? You give them something they're passionate about as a focus for their work and we know that many kids are passionate about sport! This is why we came up with Literacy Through Sport which uses sport as a focus to motivate pupils, making literacy more fun and purposeful. 

As part of our Literacy Through Sports initiative, we've created lots of exciting new content that uses a sporting theme to get children motivated and engaged in writing. The aim is to improve the enjoyment, confidence and attainment levels of children.

Here's what you'll find on Pobble to get your class writing:

Six ready-made sports-themed writing lessons ✏️

They include warm-up tasks, links to awesome video content, and writing activities, followed by a longer writing task. Check them out:

1. A motivational team talk - This Literacy Through Sport session focuses on how to inspire a team to victory. Children will write their own motivational speech in character as the coach. It is their responsibility to draw out the hero within each player. See this lesson.

2. Sport journalistic writing - Here is a lesson based on the 1966 Football World Cup final- Children will write their own commentary about a sporting event of their choice. See this lesson.

3. Healthy, inside and out - This Literacy Through Sport session focuses on overall health and helps children to gain an understanding of what being healthy, actually is before writing either an informative leaflet, a recipe for a healthy body and mind or a write a report about one specific health issue. See the lesson.

4. A sporting event, persuasion - Imagine if your home town could host an incredible sports competition! This session is based on writing a report to persuade the local community to host a major, sporting event. Children will develop their ideas before writing their own letter to an MP. See the lesson.

5. A sports biography - This Literacy through sport session will provide an opportunity for the children to find out about inspirational, sportspeople so they can write a biography. See the lesson.

6. Sporting suspense - This Literacy through sport session is based on the children writing a short piece about a tense moment in a sports situation. They will use their senses and powerful sentences to write an exciting piece. See the lesson.

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Active literacy cards -  Ten fun ways to get pupils moving and improve their literacy 💡

Want to get your class moving? We've created 10 active literacy cards for you to download and print. They use PE to engage learners with writing-based tasks. 

active literacyThey cover punctuation, synonyms, paragraphs, conjunctions and more! They're an engaging and enjoyable way to get your class learning those essential literacy skills in an active way. 

See 10 active literacy cards

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Sporting quick writes! ⏰

If you've got a few minutes spare and want to work on your pupils' writing skills, then Pobble's quick writes are ideal. They begin with some thought-provoking images and are followed by open-ended questions or writing prompts.

We recommend that these are completed in under 10 minutes and are not marked. The aim is to encourage your class to write down whatever comes to mind and focus on completing the task rather than quality and accuracy.

See an example of a sporting quick write

All you need is a Pobble subscription and you're good to go! Simply search 'sport' on Pobble to see all of our ready-made content. You'll never run out of writing inspiration again! Even better, it's the content is easily editable too! 

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You'll also find...

Sports-themed Pobble 365 writing activities 

Pobble 365 is a unique, engaging image every day of the year, with story starters, questions and writing challenges. You'll also find lots of sporting-themed Pobble 365 writing activities including Dojo Dreams, Robo Striker, The Driver, Out of the Blocks and more! You'll never be short of writing inspiration with Pobble!

Have you discovered Pobble yet?

Access a free inspiring image, story starter and short burst writing activities, every day! Engage and motivate even your most reluctant writers.

Visit Pobble