Geography at key stage 3    (Year 7)

What are they, where are they and who plays for them?

• Conduct a brainstorming activity to discover what pupils know about Premiership football. Why is it called the Premier League? Can they give examples?
• Provide pupils with a current list of Premiership teams, an outline map of the UK and an atlas and ask them to map the location of the teams currently in the league.
• Divide the teams among the class and ask the pairs/groups to find out the names of team members and where they were born. Ask pupils to record this information on the map.

Which are the most successful teams? Are they in the most wealthy countries?

• Consider with pupils how success is judged in football, eg top of the league, FA Cup, European Cup, club assets. Ask them to find out which countries' teams reached the quarter-finals of the 1998 World Cup in France. Consider how success is judged in playing at this level.
• Ask pupils to suggest how we judge the wealth of countries, eg living standards, possessions, salary, health care. Introduce pupils to the idea of GDP. Ask them to compare success in football and a country's wealth, using GDP. The location of the most successful teams may be mapped, together with some of the world's wealthiest countries and any patterns noted.

• Ask pupils to select a team they follow/support/have some interest in and, using a variety of information sources, eg a road atlas, timetables, brochures, to plan a journey to the team's next home game and/or a series of journeys to an away match - the shortest in linear distance, in time distance and the cheapest. An extension task would be to repeat the exercise for a team in the Champions' League (Europe).
• The internet can provide access to a range of sites for route planning and rail and bus timetables, which are interactive and enable pupils to search for options more quickly. Although pupils should develop the skills for route planning manually, route planning software can enable them to investigate more alternatives and gather more evidence for analysis and decision making.

What impact does a stadium have on an area?

• Discuss with pupils the idea of location requirements, eg for a secondary school.
• Brainstorm the question What are the location requirements of a football stadium today? Ask pupils to locate their local team's stadium on a 1:50,000 OS map, draw a sketch map and add notes about its particular location. They can then assess its suitability in the future.
• Ask pupils to investigate the impact the stadium has on the local area and on those people who live close to it. Divide pupils into groups and ask them to identify what questions they would need to ask, who they would try to talk to (age/sex), how they would collect and record the information before visiting the area in which the stadium is located, if this is appropriate or possible.
• After the visit, help pupils to collate, transform and represent the data.

How and why has the location of a stadium changed?

• Compare the old and new proposed stadium locations for a club which has moved in recent years or proposes to move by drawing up a table showing the characteristics of the new and old locations.
• Discuss with pupils the impact that changing the location has had or will have on different groups of people. This may be developed as a research activity by arranging for pupils to contact different interest groups, eg financial director of the football club, local police, coach operator, local residents (different age range/sex), local shopkeepers/publicans. Contact can be made by formal letter on school notepaper, or by e-mail or fax.
• When responses are received arrange pupils, in groups, to read and summarise responses from the different groups contacted. Views may be represented orally, in the form of a public meeting, as part of the preparation for a more formal piece of writing, and for pupils to make notes on the views of others about the move/proposed move. Ask the pupils to write a structured report, divided into paragraphs and using subheadings, presenting the main arguments of their findings, and the outcome (if in retrospect) or their considered proposal (if as yet undecided). The audience for this report could be the local authority planning department.

Is football big business, and if so why?

• Ask pupils to identify the different jobs associated with a football club - players, manager, caterers, cleaners. Discuss with pupils how their employment is different from primary and secondary employment and how football is linked to other work sectors, eg football strip design and manufacture, transport, emergency services, and other places. Ask pupils to identify links with other places by accessing football club pages on the internet, to find the branches of supporters' clubs/retail outlets of two or three football teams. Ask pupils to make a list of the products for sale at a retail outlet, where these are manufactured and how this generates income for the club.