Instructions

Step 1.

Show the children this picture of the Matildas. You can use our digital slide deck or print it out on A3 for students to see.

Ask the following questions:

Who do you think these people are?
What do you think they are going to do?
Why are they wearing matching clothes?
What colours are their shirts?

Explain that this is Australia’s women’s football team, the Matildas, and they are getting ready to play soccer!

What can you see on the front of their shirts?
Do you know any of these numbers?

Have children identify any numbers they can. Some children may be able to do double digits (i.e. 13 = thirteen), and some may be able to identify individual numbers (i.e. 13 = one and three). Both are valid ways to explore numbers!

Let’s see who we can find:

The Captain, Sam Kerr, is wearing a number 2. Which person is the captain?
There’s another person with a 2 on her shirt, but she has a 1 AND a 2. Her name is Ellie Carpenter, and she is a defender. Can you find her?
The goalie, Teagan Micah, has the number 8 (18 for children who can do double digits) on her shirt. Can you find her?
The 2 people with the number 4 on their shirts are defenders (Clare Polkinghorne (4) and Alanna Kennedy (14)). Can you find them?
There’s a person with 2 number 1s on her shirt (or eleven). Her name is Mary Fowler, and her job is to score goals. She’s a striker! Can you find her?
Chloe Logarzo plays in the midfield. She’s wearing a number 6, can you find her?
There’s another midfielder here, her name is Emily Van Egmond, and she’s wearing number 10. Where is she?
There’s just one player who has a three on her shirt (13), and her name is Tameka Yallop. She plays in the midfield too. Where is she?
There are 2 people with the number 7 on their shirts. Steph Catley is a defender, and she’s wearing number 7. Kyah Simon is number 17, and she was the first Indigenous player to score a goal for the Matildas. She is a striker!

Differentiation

For students who are just starting to learn about numbers, you can write the number on the board or have a flash card handy to show to the children to help them find the player with that number on their shirt.

Step 2:

Now it’s time to make our own Matildas jersey! It would be a good idea to print out as many pages of the Jersey Worksheets as you have children (i.e. if you have 12 students in your class, print pages 1-12). This will be helpful for some of the activities later on. For younger learners, let them colour in the jersey however they want! For older learners, you can have a discussion about how green and gold are Australia’s sporting colours:

“Long associated with Australian sporting achievements, the national colours have strong environmental connections. Gold conjures images of Australia’s beaches, mineral wealth, grain harvests and the fleece of Australian wool. Green evokes the forests, eucalyptus trees and pastures of the Australian landscape. Green and gold are also the colours of Australia’s national floral emblem – the golden wattle.” - Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

You can show the children some examples of the green and gold jerseys that Sam Kerr has worn in the slide deck. You can prompt discussion with the following questions

What do you think of when you think of the colour green?
What do you think of when you think of the colour gold?
Which one of Sam Kerr’s jerseys is your favourite?
What do you like about these jerseys?

Teaching tip: Questioning

Open-ended questions encourage a child to develop their language by using a wider range of vocabulary to answer the question in a more nuanced way. Open-ended questions require them to provide more information and detail and to actively process how to structure their thoughts in order to deliver a coherent answer and provide sufficient details.

Open-ended questions cannot be responded to with one-word answers such as yes or no, and are usually not looking for a specific response. They empower the child to think for themselves and grow their self-confidence, as they know you, the educator/teacher/adult, are invested in what they have to say.

Continue questioning after the child has answered, asking, “Why do you say that?” This further reveals a child’s thinking.

Remember to give children time to respond and allow them to respond fully without interrupting. These types of questions might be unfamiliar, and their answers require complex thinking, meaning the whole process is a verbal challenge that might take a little while to overcome.

Find out more open-ended questioning tips here.

When the children are colouring their jerseys talk with them about the numbers on the jerseys.

Can they identify their own number?
Can they trace it with their finger?
With a pen?
What numbers do their peers have?

As children start to finish their jerseys, you might ask:

can they put away the same number of pens/pencils as the number of their jersey?
can they find their number somewhere else in the classroom, maybe on a poster, a building block, or a book?
can they go and get the same number of building blocks/beads/other items as the number from their jersey?

Possible lines of development

Once the jerseys are all beautifully coloured in, you can do some follow-up activities such as:

put the jerseys up around the classroom or playground. When the educator calls out a number, the children have to find the jersey with that number on it and run to it.
practice fine motor skills by cutting the jerseys out
practice putting the jerseys in the correct number order
line the jerseys up in the correct number order, and practice one-to-one number correspondence by counting down the line
put their jerseys up on your display wall/window to help decorate your classroom for the Matilda’s world cup campaign!

Math and Matildas - World Cup Jerseys

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Summary

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