Lessons

• examining values and beliefs about cultural and social issues such as disability, gender, race, sexuality and violence.
• investigating how respecting diversity and challenging disability discrimination, racism, sexism and homophobia influence individual and community health and wellbeing

• Explain to students this lesson and upcoming lessons will be focusing on disability rights and inclusive sports.
  
  
  
  As a class, discuss the term ‘disability’, and discuss the different types of disability e.g. intellectual, physical and sensory, physcosocial

• Introduce the concept of disability rights. As a class or in small groups, students brainstorm the rights of people with disabilities. After the brainstorm, facilitate a class discussion to ensure students understand that people with disabilities have the same rights as people without disabilities, including the right to participate in sporting and recreational activities. Through this activity, introduce and discuss the terms ‘equal opportunity’, ‘accessibility’, ‘inclusion’ and ‘participation’.
  
   
• As a class discuss the importance of using respectful language, which is an important part of human rights. Get students to draw up two columns in their book titled ‘HOT’ and ‘NOT’. Give each student a HOT card and NOT card. Use the vocabulary and phrases from the Don’t dis my ability: what’s hot, what’s not language guide and get students to raise their sign on whether they think the word is ‘hot’ or ‘not’. Students then write the terms down under the correct column in their books.
  
   
• Literacy activity: The interactive crossword information gap activity is a pre-vocabulary exercise that will help students become more familiar with the key vocabulary used in the Resource sheet: Background information – sport and people with disabilities and throughout the unit.
  
  
  
  Divide students into pairs to conduct an interactive crossword information gap activity. Each student in the pair will get either the across solutions or the down solutions. They must not show each other the solutions. Instead students need to ask questions e.g. ‘what is one across’ and the other person has to answer by explaining the definition, which the first person matches to their word bank. It is important to note students should not mention the ‘solution’ in their explanations/definitions. Depending upon the students, you may like to provide a general word bank of the words included in the crossword puzzle.
  
  
  
  Alternatively, this activity can be conducted as a whole class interactive activity e.g. the teacher has the ‘across’ solutions while students have the ‘down’ solutions.
  
  
  
  The list of words included in the crossword activity are: ‘disability’, ‘public life’, ‘unlawful’, ‘equal access’, ‘treaty’, ‘take action’, ‘discrimination’, ‘equal basis’, ‘mainstream’, ‘provision’, ‘recreational’, ‘tourism’, ‘venues’, ‘leisure’, ‘services, ‘inclusion’ and ‘participation’. The words included in the crossword activity are primarily sourced from the Resource sheet: Background information – sports and people with disabilities.
  
  
  
  Teacher’s Note: Where the answer is more than one word, a space has been left on the crossword grid between the words.

• Following up the interactive crossword activity, as a class, students go through and discuss the Resource sheet: Background information – sports and people with disabilities.
  
  
  
  As a class or in small groups, students brainstorm the physical, mental and emotional benefits of participating in sport for individuals and the broader community. This exercise will help consolidate the notion that accessible sport is important.

• In pairs or as individuals, students complete the Activity sheet: Sport and people with disabilities. Prior to the completion of the worksheets, the terms ‘mainstream sport’ and ‘disability specific sport’ may need to be defined and discussed. Be sure to encourage students to consider a broad range of disabilities, such as physical, sensory, psychosocial and intellectual.
  
  
  
  Facilitate a short classroom discussion to go through student responses.

Resource sheet: Background information - Sports and people with a disability

Activity sheet: Sports and people with disabilities - interactive crossword (across solutions and down solutions)

Activity sheet: Sports and people with a disability

Don’t dis my ability language guide: what’s hot, what’s not http://www.dontdismyability.com.au/tools_and_tips/language_guide

• researching opportunities in the local community to participate in regular physical activity and examining how accessible these opportunities are for students

Pre-viewing/Scaffolding Activities

Teacher’s Note: In the Disability Convention it is recognised that disability is an evolving concept and no fixed definition of disability is provided. This is illustrated by the fact that the Convention’s use of the terms ‘disability sports’, ‘mainstream sport’ and ‘disability specific sport’ are now considered somewhat outdated. ‘Inclusive sport’ is the preferred overarching term used here, however in order to be consistent with the language of the Convention, references to Convention terms are included in this resource.

• Introduce the following terminology: modified sports, adapted sports and disability sports.
  • Modified sports – sports that have been modified from regular versions of the sport, to meet the needs of players’ ages, size, abilities, skills and experiences e.g. touch football.
    
    
    
    As a class, students could discuss the similarities and differences between the mainstream and modified versions of touch football. This information could be represented using a Venn diagram. This will help students better understand the term ‘modified sport’.
    
     
  • Adapted sports – sports that have been adapted to meet the needs of people with disabilities, e.g. wheelchair basketball. The term ‘able-bodied’ will need to be explained to students.
    
    
    
    As a class, students could discuss the similarities and differences between the mainstream and adapted versions of wheelchair basketball. This information could be represented using a Venn diagram. This will help students better understand the term ‘adapted sport’.
    
     
  • Disability sports – (also disabled sports or parasports) sports that are played by people with physical and/or intellectual disabilities. Could be adapted sports, or disability-specific sports. There may need to a discussion about the differences between physical and intellectual disabilities.
    
     
• In groups, pairs or as individuals, students research an adapted or modified sport. Provide students with the Activity sheet: Researching adapted or modified sports to scaffold the research. Students could either generally research about an adapted or modified sport, or research about an adapted or modified sport in their local area. This information could be presented as a report using Microsoft Word.
  
  
  
  Alternatively, students could collaboratively use Google sites to create a class website about adapted and modified sports. Divide students into small groups. Each group researches a different adapted or modified sport. Provide students with a copy of the Activity sheet to scaffold the research. Students create a webpage on the class website to present information about their researched sport.

Activity sheet: Researching an adapted or modified sport

Microsoft Word / Google sites