Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: Sporting heroes (+34 minute film)

15 minutes

Find Out: We are the Trailblazers!

25 minutes

Take Action: Journey to equality

5 minutes

Reflection

Learning intentions and success criteria

Students will:

explore the Australian Women’s Football Team’s journey with a focus on how the football community came together to support them in their battle for pay parity.

Students can:

summarise the key points of the ‘Trailblazers’ movie
create a timeline showing the progression of women’s soccer in Australia.

Tune In: Sporting heroes

Step 1

Ask students: “Who are your sporting heroes?”. Students can write a sporting hero and their sport on a sticky note (or small piece of paper). Have a few students share their heroes. Students hold onto these to use later.

Step 2

Lead a class discussion using the following questions:

What sports do they play?
What about their friends?
What about their parents?

Keep a record of sports played by gender. You could write the sports in a different colour for each gender or create a list for each gender.

Step 3

Lead a ‘see, think, wonder’ discussion with students based on the following questions:

What do you notice?
Are there any patterns?
Are there any themes that become apparent?
Are any sports weighted more towards one gender than another?
Why do you think this is?

Step 4

Using our sporting heroes from Step 1, draw a line on a whiteboard or similar to create a space for male/female sporting heroes. Ask students to bring their sticky notes and place their hero in the correct section.

Lead a class discussion:

What do you notice?
Is there a gender divide?
Why do you think this?

Numeracy extension: Students can create a stacked bar graph showing the different sports and the proportions of different genders who play each sport.

Step 5

Today, we’re going to look at a group of people who are working to break down barriers.

Watch ‘Trailblazers’

Trailblazers (https://clickv.ie/w/INpy)

Find Out: We are the Trailblazers!

Step 1

Lead a ‘think, pair, share’ class discussion as students fill in the worksheet. You may like to do one question at a time to break up the talking/writing.

Who are the Trailblazers?
What were the Trailblazers trying to achieve?
Why were they trying to achieve these goals?
What were their barriers?
Who was helping them?
Why is it important to have equity between genders?

You can explore the About Trailblazers (trailblazersfilm.com.au/about/) to help answer these questions.

Take Action: Journey to equality

Step 1

Create a timeline showing the progression of women’s football in Australia. You could share ‘Football Australia’s 100 Years of Women’s Football’ as an example. You may like to complete this as a class using border tape across a wall or an online collaborative template such as Miro. Alternatively, students could complete individually or in small groups in their notebooks or on paper. Assist students in using various primary and secondary sources to show how the team progressed on their journey to pay parity. Include key moments from supporters and detractors. Students will need to select key dates and justify why they should be included in their timeline.

Here are some sources to get your students started:

Learning support: We have created a ‘History of Women’s Football’ Factsheet that students can use as an alternative to conducting their own research.

You may need to remind students about the difference between primary (original records, firsthand witnesses, evidence from someone directly involved, etc.) and secondary (sources that re-tell, interpret, analyse, etc.) sources of information.

Learning extension: Ask students to create commentary on how the different events they selected impacted the current state of women’s football.

Numeracy extension: Ask students to create the timeline to scale. Students will need to decide the appropriate units of measurement to fit their display place and accurately represent the events and timing.

Step 2

Decide how you will share this timeline with family/friends/school.

Reflection

Ask students to think about:

their favourite part of the film
the thing/event they think made the biggest difference in the Trailblazers' journey to equality.

Sporting Equality

Go to

Summary

Lesson guides and printables

In this lesson