Sunday 30 June 2013

Geography and Wimbledon

Watching the tennis at Wimbledon is one of my favourite things about summer. I even focused my undergraduate dissertation on nationalism at the famous tournament.


This made me think about how you could teach about Wimbledon in Geography.

When I completed my dissertation I looked at the different nationalities of players at Wimbledon. Students could be given a list of competitors and asked to map the different countries - is Wimbledon a sign of globalisation? How has sport become more globalised over time? They could even compare the list to a tournament from the early 1900s.

This interesting graphic that I found on Twitter last week shows the production miles of Wimbledon tennis balls. You could use it as a starting point for a lesson about interconnections and globalisation. "Where do tennis balls come from?" There would be some excellent opportunities for mapping, both using atlases and using GIS skills, and for numeracy if the students were to add up the total number of miles.

 
 

How about how Wimbledon is aiming to be sustainable? In 2012 they introduced sustainable strawberries as the report below shows. "What is special about Wimbledon's strawberries?" This could be compared to other sports grounds to compare sustainability.

http://www.leafuk.org/resources/000/665/446/Wimbledon_June_2012_FINAL.pdf

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