: Leonard King
Trend task
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Approach: Station
Level: Year 4 and year 8
access task
Focus: Listening for specific information
Resources: Video recording on laptop computer

Questions/instructions:

This activity uses the computer.

Click the Leonard King button to hear Leonard King talking about basketball.

Put a tick in the boxes next to the questions that Leonard has already answered.

Leonard King, who plays basketball, was invited to speak to a class about himself and his sport. Before Leonard visited the class, the children wrote some questions they wanted to ask him. The questions are on your answer sheet. Look at them now.
[following questions also scroll through screen during voice-over]
Question 1: How long have you lived in New Zealand?
Question 2: Where did you live before you came to New Zealand?
Question 3: Do you have any family with you in New Zealand?
Question 4: What’s the best age for starting to play basketball?
Question 5: How old were you when you started playing basketball?
Question 6: Why did you start to play basketball?
Question 7: Why is basketball a good game for people to play?
Question 8: What other sports have you played?
Now you will see the start of Leonard’s talk to the class. At the end of the tape, put a tick beside the questions that Leonard has answered so far.

leonard

Video voiceover:
(Leonard King speaking in classroom)
I am from America. I’m from Florida, the state of Florida, which is on the east coast of America, okay?
And I come from a very large family. I have, ah... there are 10 of us in our family. Five boys and five girls. So we had to have this large table so everyone can sit around the table at one time. Five boys, five girls.
I don’t know if my parents actually worked on having five boys and five girls but that’s what they ended up having. And I’m number seven in the line and that’s how our father remembered us. He’d call us by numbers and not by our names.
So, originally though I’m from Cleveland, Ohio and I started playing basketball when I was 13 years of age. Is anyone in here 13? Raise your hand. 13? Ah, no? 10? 10? Yeah, a few 10 year olds. And some nine year olds? Yeah, the rest are nine. Excellent, excellent. Yeah so… and eight? Yeah, sorry and eight. And, and three? Oh, no three. Okay. So eight, nine and 10.
So as you can see, when I was your age, I wasn’t playing basketball. When I was your age I was playing sports like soccer. I was playing a bit of American football, Grid Iron. Have you heard of that before? Has anyone seen that? Yeah, you have to put on a big helmet, big shoulder pads, get really mean and screw your face up and then you try to hit someone. So I used to play that sport there but it was just a bit too rough for me.
So I started playing basketball when I was 13 years of age. And the only reason I started playing basketball was because I was one of the taller kids in the class. And the coach saw me walking down the hallway one day and he bumped into me and said, “Hey, would you like to play basketball?” and I said, “No, I don’t think I want to play basketball. I’m a football player.” And he said “Oh, we think we could make you a basketball player.”
So, later that day he got me into the gym and it was my first time of ever touching a basketball and I really enjoyed it because when I grabbed the basketball all the other members on the team were much shorter than me and they couldn’t get the ball. And so I held it up really high and I really enjoyed playing basketball. And that was my first game of basketball, keeping the ball away from the rest of my team mates and I really enjoyed that. And that’s how I got into playing basketball, okay.


% responses
2006 ('02)
y4
y8
How long have you lived in New Zealand?
 
67 (66)
91 (91)
Where did you live before you came to New Zealand?
tick
82 (79)
91 (88)
Do you have any family with you in New Zealand?
 
43 (43)
78 (77)
What is the best age for starting to play basketball?
 
36 (39)
78 (79)
How old were you when you started playing basketball?
tick
92 (89)
98 (98)
Why did you start to play basketball?
tick
88 (85)
93 (92)
Why is basketball a good game for people to play?
 
58 (55)
84 (86)
What other sports have you played?
tick
92 (90)
99 (99)
Total score:
8
11 (10)
53 (51)
7
21 (20)
24 (26)
5–6
37 (35)
17 (18)
0–4
31 (35)
6 (5)
Subgroup Analysis:
Year 4

Year 8

Commentary:
Year 4 students found this task involving identification of questions that were addressed in a speech rather challenging. By year 8, performance improved dramatically. There are no gender differences, but Pakeha children outperformed both Mäori and Pasifika students. Students performed comparably in 2002 and 2006.
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