When is the Women's World Cup?
Australia and New Zealand will host the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023 football tournament this summer (summer for us!). The international football tournament features 32 nations (including England) competing to be the best in the world. All matches will be played from Thursday 20 July to Sunday 20 August.
What is the Reading Challenge?
The Women’s World Cup Reading Challenge tournament is a great opportunity to find your children's favourite book.
There are 32 countries taking part in the Women’s World Cup. Our challenge starts from the quarter finals of the World Cup. Each country that gets through to the quarter finals will be represented by a book (or another type of text, such as a magazine, blog, or online article) and championed by a friend or family member. Each text is represented on your Reading Challenge wallchart, and the kids have to ‘win’ matches for the chance to progress their text all the way to the final.
The idea is to mirror these football matches with ‘matches’ between your participants’ texts. Your wallchart has a representation of these matches, along with dates. There is also a space for everyone to place the names of their text, alongside the nation that it is linked to.
How do the texts ‘play against’ each other?
Option 1 (Amateur)
Each of your texts are affiliated with a country in the quarter finals, and the results from that nation’s matches determine the progress for that text on the wallchart, i.e. if their nation wins, the text wins. Before each match, the appropriate team should tell the rest of the class a little about their book. It’s a great way to start a discussion about the reading likes and dislikes of your child's friends and family. Which book does everyone want to win each football match?
Option 2 (Professional)
Participants have a ‘book match’ between their texts. Once everyone has their selected text, and before the tournament gets going, participants should familiarise themselves with their reads and considering why theirs is a worthy winner. For a match, each of the participants whose ‘real-life’ teams are playing in the tournament group stages go head-to–head, presenting three arguments to the rest of the class about why their text is so good and should be the winner. The other participants hold a ‘secret ballot’ to decide which text ‘wins’. The two winning books in each group progress to the semi-finals before a final where a winner is selected. Each time participants ‘play’ their text, they should be asked to include new points about why their text is so good.
Option 3 (Legend)
You could run two versions of the wallchart: one which reflects the progress of the texts following the success of the actual teams in the tournament, and one which reflects the success of the texts that play off against each other in your group. For all options, the process continues throughout the tournament. As matches progress, and texts are knocked out, the tension and excitement will build!
