Introduction

This sporting and social history scheme of work covers the history of Huddersfield’s professional rugby league club, which since 1996 has been called Huddersfield Giants.

Aimed at Years 5 to 8, it is a local history scheme at its core, but also contains a number of cross-curricular elements. All themes are referenced to the National Curriculum and include a Class Assessment Sheet.

Part 1, Club Core History, is comprised of three themes. Theme 1, ‘How Rugby Football Came to Huddersfield, Part 1’ traces the combined histories of association and rugby football from ancient times to the first recorded matches in Huddersfield and the formation of the Huddersfield club.Theme 2, ‘How Rugby Football Came to Huddersfield, Part 1’ traces the social, industrial and cultural development of Huddersfield and studies how aspects such as the growth of transport, communications and industry impacted on the growth of organised leisure, including the growth of the rugby club. Theme 3, Timeline, covers the chronology of the club’s history alongside main local, national and international developments, encouraging children to make further connections between local events and the wider world.

Part 2, The Birthplace of Rugby League covers patterns in ’The Origins of the Clubs’ in Theme 4. Theme 5, ‘The Birth of Rugby League’, looks at the social and economic issues that led to one of the key events in the history of Huddersfield, the split of the Northern Union from the Rugby Football Union at the George Hotel in 1895 – the birth of rugby league, the only sport that knows when and where it began.

Part 3, Aspects and Issues,is comprised of three themes. InTheme 6, Hall of Fame, children learn about the lives and careers of some of Huddersfield’s players from the club’s famous ‘Team of all Talents’ which won all four available trophies in 1914-15. Theme 7, Champions, covers several mathematical concepts related to reading information from and completing league tables and lists of match results, culminating in children devising and conducting their own mathematical investigation. Theme 8, World War I, highlights the moral issue of whether or not professional rugby should have continued when young men were being asked to volunteer for the armed forces. It also looks at how rugby football was used to recruit men to the forces and a famous national recruitment poster that had its origins in Huddersfield. Theme 9, The Supporters’ Stories, equips children to interview and record older supporters about their memories of rugby league in Huddersfield.

Part 4, What We Have Learned, gives children the opportunity to use information from the scheme creatively. Theme 10, Inventing a Board Game,involves using the Timeline which children completed in Theme 3 to create a game, using one ‘square’ per year, with rewards for landing on years when the club enjoyed success and forfeits for the less successful years. Theme 11, Facts and Opinions, requires children to decide whether statements about the club’s history are facts or opinions, to decide whether they agree, partly agree or disagree with the opinions and to explain why. Theme 12, Creating a Match Day Programme, is an opportunity to use information from the project, and to research further information, in designing and writing a match day programme for Huddersfield Giants, including contemporary and historical features.

There is also a folder of PowerPoint resources, comprising 13 assemblies. These illustrate various sports-related Citizenship concepts and issues, mainly through examples from sporting history, with emphasis on the Huddersfield Giants. There is also a PowerPoint presentation containing additional classroom resources.