One of the entries on Hilary Wilce’s blog followed up a recent Quandary column on cricket in schools. She said that a reader’s reply showed two things: an enthusiastic teacher can turn cricket into a lively, active lesson, and educators have a habit of reinventing the wheel.
The reader’s argument
Some teachers had dismissed the idea of cricket lessons as a farce, with children spending most of the time idle. The reader, a trainee primary teacher completing a postgraduate teaching certificate, disagreed. He said that it depends on how the sport is taught and which resources are used.
An indoor cricket project
On his first placement, in an inner-city school in northern England, he led his class through five lessons of indoor cricket. He relied on a ready-made teaching resource called Howzat, produced with support from a cricket charity. According to the reader, the pack gave him a way to teach the game even though he had little prior experience of coaching it, and it included classroom-based activities linked to the sport.
A second message
Two days later, the same reader wrote again saying he was happy for his comments to be shared with the charity behind the materials. He suggested that the resource deserved wider use in schools and said that he had a strong love for the sport and good knowledge of it.
Wilce’s point
The blog presented this story as an example of how good ideas already exist in schools and are frequently rediscovered. For more of her commentary, see her main blog page and her Quandary column.