sport and literacy skills
We at dadzclub think this is an amazing idea and hope that more schools take such an innovative approach to literacy.
Making sure that pupils and their parents really understand the way literacy skills can be taught, learned and measured before enjoying fun and healthy sports sessions is such a fantastic approach to teaching and learning!
The Double Club:
The Double Club is a collaboration between The Connaught Secondary School in Hampshire, Connaught Leisure and Aldershot Town FC with the aim of supporting literacy in local primary schools. Launched in July 2011, the Double Club was recently honoured with Lemos & Crane’s National Literacy Award for Schools.
The aim of the club is to engage pupils in literacy in the context of family and community and to improve liaisons between primary and secondary schools. The scheme works to increase self-esteem among pupils, improve everyone’s fitness and to help parents understand their children's education. Ultimately, The Connaught School wants to improve literacy as a whole across the town of Aldershot. Ambitious stuff!
The club runs over a six week period with year 6 pupils and their parents participating in an hour of literacy and an hour of sport once a week. There are 2 intakes across the academic year meaning 80 pupils and parents a year receive 12 hours of literacy teaching and sports coaching.
All the teachers and coaches give their time free of charge which enables the club to run for a very low annual cost which the school pays for, though Lemos & Crane have covered this for 2012.
What the programme involves:
The literacy programme includes activities such as 'King Fu Punctuation', parents working with their children on descriptive writing and a sports hall letter-grab run-around for spelling practice. Participants also join in a study of presentational devices particularly in newspapers and extended writing tasks to work on at home. In the final session there is a celebration of achievements and reports are given on the extended writing tasks. The club finishes with the awarding of certificates presented by Aldershot Town FC players.
What did the parents say?
Evaluation sheets from previous participants show that parents and pupils thought the scheme was invaluable. Word of mouth from those involved to other potential participants has led to growing enthusiasm amongst the local schools and there are waiting lists for the next entries. The project hopes to continue with tri-annual delivery for the next 2 years.
Arsenal FC
The model for the Double Club comes from Arsenal FC's project of the same name which was set up in 1998 with the aim of fusing football and education together. The hope was to form a fun and enjoyable way for young people to engage with their academic studies and football at the same time. The Arsenal Double Club now covers a large number of curriculum subjects including the popular language school. Read more about the Double Club and watch a video of the club in action (including manager Arsene Wenger showing off his German Skills) at the Arsenal Double Club website.
We at dadzclub would like to congratulate all those involved for the Lemos & Crane award and would love to see more schools incorporating this innovative scheme into their education plans.
What do you think of this scheme? Do any of the schools near you run a similar scheme? Let us know by leaving a comment below.