My year 9 class (all male) are hugely enthusiastic about cricket. As I write this, the England/India ICC final is being ruined by the weather, so I thought I might bring my own cricket into the classroom.
Question cricket requires the preparation of a good “over” of 6 questions by each member of the class. This means that they must also prepare full answers to their questions.
I shall divide the class into teams and ask team captains to choose bowlers and batsmen based on a quick look at the available questions. Captains shall name their bowlers and arrange an order for the bowling attack of 5 bowlers. Meanwhile, the batting side shall do the same and arrange their batting line up. I have stipulated a maximum number of deliveries to be faced by any batsman to ensure that all the class end up taking part in some way.
Questions are posed to the batsman who has a time limit in which to reply. If he is correct he scores runs, based on the detail and accuracy of his response. If he is incorrect then he is out. During the game, all students should be taking notes to remind themselves of responses.
I hope that this will be fun and a good way to revise the text we are studying, whilst ensuring that the students get used to delivering detailed responses in full sentences when speaking in class.
It worked: scorecard
One benefit for the teacher here was the fact that I could tell very easily which students had indeed completed the reading required. A couple of wickets fell to innocuous questions because the batsmen had not read as far as they should have done. I was also interested that some of the feedback focused on the pressure to deliver a good, full answer. I see no issue with this -neither did the boys – since it ensures that every now and then pressure that might mimic the examination room enters the classroom.
English Teaching Resources 
Reminds me of our trench warfare on Owen et al. Will definitely use with my cricket-mad year 10 boys, although not sure the girls will approve!
It went really well – hope the new lot appreciate it. It’ll be rugby starters next!
[…] had played so often that the material had become second nature. I use this to suggest a good use of cue cards. On one side the Quotation, on the other a list of bullet point comments – speaker and […]