Wednesday 19th April 

It was really nice seeing all the children back and so keen after the Easter break. This week we re capped on all of our focus areas that we have looked at so far and put them all into our game play. The last session was a tough one with wrong decisions deliberately being made by a referee to challenge how the children reacted. This is a very difficult attribute for children of this age as they are just so keen to win, but referees are human and as discussed have to make a lot of quick decisions on the spot. We are now becoming more active and aware of our football behaviour and as a result the players are thinking about what they are doing a lot more. We spent some time discussing how these skills can be used in class and around school too.
Being part of the Football Academy is more than just turning up to play football, each week we have a focus area that we look at both within and outside of the game.  This will lead on to developing not only football skills, but leadership, team building and personal skills too. For this reason, players may be sent home with small pieces of work to complete for the following week. It is important this is done as it leads on to our next focus and is a way of earning their RESPECT colours. If this is not completed, players will be unable to take part in the following session, we want the children to be taking personal responsibility.

Wednesday 26th April
This week, our focus area was on praise and encouragement towards our team players. We spoke about why this was important and the possible outcomes of positive praise on our behaviour, effort and game play. Equally we looked at the detrimental effect of negative and unsupportive comments and how this can affect our performance. There is a real difference in the children’s game play that is starting to develop. They are really starting to look at the attributes required for playing the right way and not just booting the ball to score a goal! It’s really nice to watch.
 

Wednesday 3rd May
We continued to look at praise and encouragement towards our team players this week and what kind of things we can say to motivate and pick their heads up if something goes wrong. The children were very good at this, but there were also times when frustration got the better of them when a mistake was made. We looked at this and spoke about how we can put this right and the children came up with shaking the players hand, which is great! We will continue to look at this throughout each game play so that it becomes embedded in the children.

 

Wednesday 10th May 

There was no Football Academy this week and typically the weather was beautiful. As you may have seen, a football tournament is on the calendar for Wednesday 17th May at a local primary school. However, we haven’t had any information about this and are a bit concerned it will be a last minute rush. For this reason, we have decided to arrange a mini football tournament among the children that are involved in the football academy, so not academy session will take place next week, instead (weather permitting) we will be over in the field for the afternoon. Parents are invited to attend to watch and support. More information to follow.