Activity

Watch the clip through as a class before giving pupils a short amount of time (4 minutes) to write a sports commentary for the clip as if it was an Olympic race (they might respond better to the analogy of football commentary). Pupils should be encouraged to use appropriate keywords relating to reaction time and the nervous system.

In addition, pupils should describe include information about the senses the cheetah uses to track the wildebeest, what happens inside the cheetah's nervous system and the signals. Pupils can then present their commentaries (in their best John Motson voices, of course!) to the rest of the class, talking as the clip is played back.

To stretch pupils a little more, they could be given stop watches to watch the clip, calculating the time it takes the cheetah to catch the wildebeest. Having provided pupils with a figure for the distance covered by the cheetah in order to catch the wildebeest, pupils should be able to calculate the speed at which the animal was running.

Some more ideas

• More able pupils (KS5) maybe provided with data on the wildebeest how fast it can run and the length of time a cheetah can run of top speed. Pupils then calculate how much of a head start it would have needed to get away from cheetah.