Rang a Sé have been keeping a very close eye on the Rugby World Cup 2019 these past few weeks.
In Maths we studied the top 5 teams in the world, New Zealand, Ireland, England, Wales and South Africa, and the host nation, Japan, to see if we could predict who would win the Webb Ellis Cup. We studied the 31 players in each squad and graphed some information such as age, height, weight, position and experience of the players.
In Geography we have been looking at the host country, Japan. We compared and contrasted the lives of people in Japan to our own lives to see how the players might be adjusting to the culture in Japan. We also experimented with two styles of art, Van Gogh’s expressive line and the Japanese artist, Hokusai’s famous waves.
We also compared this World Cup in Japan with previous tournaments, especially the 1995 World Cup in South Africa, which signalled the end of apartheid. We learned about the life of Nelson Mandela and his struggle for equal rights in South Africa. We looked at how the Dunnes Stores anti-apartheid strike in 1984 contributing to the governments ban on South African goods being sold in Ireland. This showed us how we can have an impact on changing things for the better. Finally, just before the midterm break, we watched the film “Invictus” which was a great way to cap off our study of South Africa and Apartheid.
A huge thank you to Ms. Byrne for her hard work and excellent ideas. We really enjoyed learning about how sport and rugby in particular can be such an influence on different people and cultures.
