Muggle Quidditch Lesson Plans

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January 6, 2013 by k. liz

I’ve never been a Harry Potter fan, but I came across this article today on timeforkids.com. I  thought it was an interesting article, and it was a good level for my seemingly mature elementary student. So, I thought I’d share the activities I did with this with you, in hopes that you would be able to use it with an intermediate level elementary through adult class.

Muggle Quidditch Lesson Plan

Target Skills: Reading, Listening, Speaking

Materials: Article, Video, handouts (optional)

Lesson Length: 45 minutes-1 hour

Objectives:

1. Students will read for comprehension and demonstrate comprehension by drawings.
2. Students will listen and compare the reading and the video.
3. Students will discuss their ideas about the game.

 

Steps:

To begin, I gave my student a piece of paper with a table on it (4 rows x 2 columns). I had inserted some vocabulary words, and we looked them up together and he drew pictures so he had a visual dictionary while he was reading. Here are the words I pre-taught: (looking back on the lesson, I might also include these words: broom, waistband, headband, dodgeball) 

• pitch
• referee
• intercollegiate
• snatch
• hooked on . . . obsessed
• zigzag
• athlete
• spectator

 

Next, my student read the story to me aloud. (It is a 1-on-1 lesson, so this is actually really good for his pronunciation practice.) We stopped every so often to check for comprehension. Reading the story this way takes a bit of time, but if you have a classroom, I’m sure that the students will get through the material faster. I’d be beneficial in a classroom setting to have some questions that the students are looking for. Some example questions could be:

• Where do people play Quidditch? 
• What kind of people are playing Quidditch? How old are they? Where do they live? What is their job?
• How can you describe Quidditch to someone who doesn’t know about it?

 

After reading the story, I had my student draw and color pictures of all of the players and tools of Quidditch and how many of each there were (Chasers, Beaters, Seekers, Keepers, Snitch, Quaffle, Bludgers). Once he finished this step, we watched the CBS special on Quidditch. Though it is authentic material, it was quite good for explaining the gist of the game again in fairly simple language. It also helped to visualize the game. I often paused the video and had my student identify what he was seeing.

This is about where my lesson ended, though I did ask if my student would want to play the game. A couple of additions I would make to this activity if I were using in the classroom would be the following:

Listening Activities: Gap fill, comprehension questions, or prediction activity

Discussion Activities:

• students can create a brief introduction or instruction either by writing, making a poster, or creating a video
• students can discuss whether or not they would want to play and why
• students can discuss how literature is affecting the real world and the positive and negative ramifications of this

 

These are just a few ideas. I thought it was a really nice resource, and hopefully interesting to students, especially those who grew up with Harry Potter!