Football Action Verbs Activity

Well, we might as well make it a hat trick, don’t you think? Now you’ll have 3 ESL Expertz activities to fill out your World Cup themed classes! This Football Action Verbs Activity is perfect for a big group, but can also be executed with smaller groups. Students look at what happened during last night’s match by reading statements from the 5 players. Once they associate 5 events to each player, they must decide who was the MVP of the match.

How it works

This activity was designed for the online classroom but can also be used as a printable.

The worksheet has 5 players at the top of the screen and 20 statements about last night’s match from the players’ perspective. The statements all contain some football-related vocabulary or football action verbs. We have done our best to give clues within the statements to clarify any vocabulary that might be new to your students. The goal is for them to understand the new vocabulary in context, or to share knowledge with one another.

1. Put your students into a maximum of 5 teams and assign them each a player.
2. Display the PDF on your screen and share it.
3. Teams take turns choosing one statement at a time to associate with their player. Each time, use the drop down menu to define which player the statement is connected to.
4. Once all of the players have 4 statements, give your teams some time to read about each player.
5. Now, go around the room and ask each student individually who they think is the MVP (Most Valuable Player).
6. The player with the most votes wins their team the game!

Of the 25 statements on the worksheet, some are positive while others are negative or neutral. This makes the game much more interesting as students will need to understand the statements and their relative impact related to a football match, thus enforcing retention!

Player one should be the MVP because he was excited about the stoppage time, which means he is passionate about his job and always looks for an opportunity to show his skills. Yes, he tripped because of his laces, but we all make little mistakes like that every once in a while!

Player one? Absolutely not! He tripped on his laces and missed his shot by hitting the crossbar. Nothing but mistakes, and passion doesn’t make up for mistakes!

It should be player two because it was his first match and he already scored a goal with a header!

etc.