I’ll admit, I’m a huge soccer fan. And I’ve been lucky to attend World Cup qualifying games in Costa Rica to see the passion firsthand. Being the number one sport in Latin America (and the world) gave me even more reason to incorporate this into my classes this year, as we head towards the World Cup in Brasil this summer.Many of the students (both boys and girls) at my school are really into soccer (Ok, we are just going to call it futbol from here on out!) as evidenced by the number of Barca and Man United jerseys roaming the halls. Last year, we started the year by having students research a soccer team from their classes’ country, but that provided a bit difficult for some countries. Finding websites for even the baseball teams in La República Dominicana and Cuba wasn’t quite plausible. In those cases, we used the Mexican league where students were able to put together some great slides:

But this being a World Cup year, I wanted to take this a step further. Instead of just finding information about the team and then never hearing about it again, (good intention, just lacking in planning/execution), I wanted this project to be a lasting one. So I decided that we would follow a league with worldwide exposure. Enter Spain’s La Liga, one of the top 4 futbol leagues in the world.

Once assigned a team and completing a webquest, students will be checking their team’s score every week. It will be easy to follow on the league’s official app, LFP, which is free. Otherwise you can use the league’s website, Univision, ESPNdeportes or other sites. The coolest thing is hearing students talk about how their teams are playing each other this weekend and making that connection with their team already.

I’ve set up students with a digital copy of their team’s schedule and they went around the room asking their classmates which team they supported (in Spanish, of course). Lots of language can come of this! Looking forward to seeing how this goes this year!

If you are interested in doing the same, but don’t know much about futbol or want to save yourself a ton of time, you can download this webquest and its accompanying supplements,  for a low price:

I have also started a futbol pinterest board and will be slowly adding to it. If you have any questions about futbol, feel free to post them here! How many Barca fans are reading this? Or do we have more Madristas here?

Corazon de Campeon Video oficial y Letras