Going for goals

Chris Powling

2006 is the year of the World Cup. What a wonderful chance this gives us to floodlight our Literacy Targets with all the dazzle of GOALS. I’m talking football, yes – though it’s not only talk that’s on offer. Reading and Writing are also up for promotion. Classroom teachers who have read the QCA’s ENGLISH 21 (with its plea to make creativity as vital as competence) will recognise at once that the sheer dullness of classroom approaches which confine themselves to The Literacy Hour has at last been shown a red card.

Football, though?

Isn’t this a topic that’s strictly for boys?

Tell that to Gaby Roslin…not to mention the increasing number of girls who now play as well as watch the beautiful game. As a children’s author, and former primary teacher, whose two daughters have long had season-tickets for our local premiership club (with its women’s league team and its female five-a-side tournaments) I’d dismiss any such objection as inherently sexist. Also dismayingly out-of-date. What follows is a series of suggestions for capitalising on a world-wide sporting activity that will never have a higher profile than it’s going to get over the next few months.  

Let’s begin with the infants. Colin McNaughton’s character Preston Pig is an established favourite at this end of the school – and his fourth adventure – GOAL! (Andersen Press) –suits our purposes perfectly. Preston’s exploits as he lives his soccer dream, with Mister Wolf marking him closely, can spin-off into drama, story-telling, story-writing, or even artwork with an alert and lively teacher to referee the proceedings. Even the endpapers – ‘Warm-Up’ and ‘Extra-Time’ – cry out for a follow-up Movement or PE lesson. It’s no fluke, by the way, that already we’re into cross-curricular activities. Think how well this topic can reinforce the littlies’  knowledge of the colour spectrum (through football shirts and national flags) as well as laying the ground for Geography-to-come by locating the teams’ home countries in an atlas or on a globe. Come to think of it, it’s no bad introduction to multicultural studies either.

Here, though, our main focus is Literacy – including an indispensable resource that’s been somewhat neglected in recent years: books. Possible titles will increase in number as we move up the age range – by Rob Childs, for instance, by the Michaels Coleman and Hardcastle, by Tony Bradman, by Bernard and Chris Ashley or even, dare I say it, Chris Powling. Pretty much every stage and temperament can be catered for. Believe me, there’s real quality to be discovered in this under-rated genre – Terence Blacker’s ‘Hotshot’ series, for instance, featuring a girl’s football team; or the same author’s The Transfer (Macmillan) perhaps the best football novel for top juniors that’s ever been written. So rich are the pickings, in fact, that a whole-school enterprise would do well to co-ordinate its various explorations with Match Annual 2006 (Boxtree) a best-selling publication, in a fanzine format, that’s accessible to everyone aged six-to-sixty and beyond.

I could go on. By now, though, any teacher whose professional ambitions go further than the three Ts of Targets, Testing and Tables (school-ranking variety) will be coming up with ideas of her own. This is just as it should be. Drawing on my own classroom experience, I’d still recommend the following:

Think local. The World Cup happens once in four years but your closest football club is there every season – and has a fan-base to secure. Consider the opportunities this brings for back-up in the form of visits (both ways) and relevant materials (often free). Remember, too, that you have a popular team that’s even closer to hand i.e. your own school squad.   

Think multi-media. Football is ever present these days on TV and DVD, in newspapers and magazines, and not least in match programmes (full of statistics which are a gift to Maths). Exploit pre- and post-match analysis, live commentaries and interviews, match reports and action replays… all are pegs on which you can hang a speaking and writing opportunity (or a choral-cum-versifying one if you include that ubiquitous crowd phenomenon, the football chant). Remember drama, too, and the advantages of slow-motion mime in setting up a dubious refereeing decision, a penalty shoot-out, a spectacular piece of skill.

Think fair play. Alas, football also has a down-side… so open up debate on the less appealing aspects of the modern game (from money-madness to ‘professional’ fouls).

Enough said?

I hope so… or at any rate enough said to get you started. After that, I’m happy to let football work its magic on you personally. Who cares about your particular strategy, after all? Whatever it is – whether 4-2-4, 4-3-3, 4-5-1 or whatever – it’s sure to play 15-15-20-10 off the pitch.

Chris Powling is a former teacher and author of more than 60 books, mainly for younger readers and the author of several NCLL publications (Storytelling in schools... and some stories about it, Meetings with the Minister and Waiting for a Jamie Oliver).