When doing the topic of sport it can be quite straight forward to add in cultural elements. For example, describing sports that are not played in the UK such as “pelota” or “balonmano”. The students can then go on to adapt the descrptions they have heard / read to produce their own explanations of what cricket or rugby are for Spanish speakers who may not have encountered these sports before. However, I have tried to develop this further by describing the ancient Mayan sport of pok-ta-pok. The same language is used as in a description of football, etc, but the past is required reinforcing some high frequency past tense phrases I have been using with my Year 9 as well as providing examples of the imperfect tense. I’ve attached the PowerPoint as well as videos showing pelota and pok-ta-pok both being played .
POWERPOINT el pok ta pok
Spanish Teaching Resources and Ideas 