Francofoot / Calciamo is a national initiative and competition for schools in Scotland organised by SCILT and the University of Stirling which combines inter-disciplinary learning in French or Italian and Physical Education.
We are very excited to unveil our new football-themed resources and national competition for learners in S2 and S3, available in both French and Italian.
The University of Stirling secured funding from the British Academy to carry out a research project in collaboration with Scotland’s National Centre for Languages (SCILT) which aims to address the gender gap in language uptake at high school level by reframing the languages curriculum around the theme of Health and Wellbeing, and specifically football.
Led by PhD researcher David Vescio, teachers from 6 secondary schools across Scotland created a set of resources which are designed to form part of the learning experience in both Languages and PE.
The lessons are targeted at S2 and S3 learners and provide teachers with scaffolded language learning resources which cover the topics of football and health & wellbeing in the target language. The vocabulary they learn in the language classroom is then designed to be used within PE lessons so that learners can consolidate their vocabulary in a real-life football lesson in their own school!
We hope that through these resources, learners are able to improve their language skills while covering a topic which they already know a lot about and so they can share their own knowledge, becoming actively involved in the learning. The resources cover key curricular topics such as the gender gap within football and the diversity of players in the football world, as well as food, healthy living and the culture of countries where the target language is spoken. Resources are all authentic and have been piloted in the classroom of the 6 project schools. These are available to download in the Resource Materials section below.
With grateful thanks to our partner schools:
Airdrie Academy, North Lanarkshire
Meldrum Academy, Aberdeenshire
Notre Dame High School, Glasgow City Council
Queen Victoria School, Dunblane
St Mungo’s Academy, Glasgow City Council
St Ninian’s High School, East Dunbartonshire
In addition to the research element and the development of resources, the project includes the running of a national competition designed to engage learners and motivate them to further their physical and linguistic abilities. This competition builds our previous experience of running Le Foot et La Francophonie, which showed that health, fitness and football are engaging contexts for learners. The British Academy funding has allowed that project to be evaluated, expanded, developed and enhanced.
The competition is open to learners in S2 and S3.
Entry to the competition requires two elements:
This could be done during class, in an extracurricular context or as an enrichment activity.
There is no requirement for all of the resource materials to be used before teams can enter the competition! Professional learning and further guidance on using the materials in your own context will be available in May to allow planning for next session.
1. A video of a simple football training drill carried out in the target language
2. An A3 poster which will form the basis of a group presentation: Ma Vie de Footballeur (Francofoot) or La Mia Vita Da Calciatore (Calciamo).
The completed video, photograph of poster, and entry form for each team must be submitted to SCILT (scilt@strath.ac.uk) by Wednesday 23 April. Shortlisting will take place and schools will be informed of the result week beginning Monday 28 April.
The final event will take place at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow on Tuesday 13 May, 10.00 – 2.00, featuring Steve Eadon from Mingalaba and other special guests.
Get your entry in now – you won’t want to miss this!
There will be two elements to the final, reflecting the two parts to the competition.
More information and guidance will be provided ahead of the final.
(Note - due to the large size of some Powerpoints you may receive a 'couldn't preview file' message, however you can still download these files)
SCILT Scotland · Lesson 1 (Calciamo) - Audio Support
Further resource materials from the project's predecessor, Le foot et la francophonie, can be found in the Support Materials section above.
Please note:
Images in the Resource Materials PowerPoints have been purchased under a commercial license for use within the context of this project only.
Images in the Guess Who activity (also included in the Resource Materials PowerPoints) have been purchased under an editorial license or downloaded under a Creative Commons license:
Male footballers
Florian Wirtz - licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license
Jamal Musiala - licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Jude Bellingham - licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Erling Haaland - licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Vinicius Junior – licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license
Images of Phil Foden, Bukayo Saka and Kylian Mbappe purchased from Shutterstock under an editorial license.
Female footballers
Alexia Putellas - licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Alessia Russo - licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Khadija Shaw - licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Vivianne Miedema - licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Lauren James - licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Mariona Caldentey - licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.
Images of Aitana Bonmatí and Sam Kerr purchased from Shutterstock under an editorial license.
For more details contact scilt@strath.ac.uk
