THE DOUBLE CLUB IS HERE!!
The project started in September 2008 with a year 8 cohort.The Double Club is located at the school and is managed by Mr. T Doveston, assistant head teacher and Beccy Roseman, school Youth Worker. Anna Letts, the Double Club Co-ordinator, working on behalf of Northamptonshire Study Centres will assist with Northampton’s sports club and study centre links and will be leading on Double Club lessons. The ‘sandwich room’ is now the Double Club classroom, decorated in club colours, memoribilia, player posters, Double Club posters and ethos. It is a ‘mini study centre’ in the school. This area is to make the project stand out as special and hopefully make students feel part of the town’s sports clubs.
This is a very exciting opportunity that provides students with a four hour personalised learning programme each week throughout the term. Each week, it will include 3 lessons in the specially designed Double Club classroom, a practical coaching session and through the term there will be opportunities to visit the Study Centres based at Northampton Saints Rugby Club, Northampton Town Football Club and Steelbacks Cricket Club. The unique sports environment and innovative educational programme will aim to support your child’s development in literacy, numeracy and ICT as well as improving their confidence, motivation and self-esteem. At the end of term a presentation event to celebrate students work.
For information about the school: http://www.thomasbecket.northants.sch.uk/
To see the articles that appear in NTFC’s match day programmes, visit the Cobblers in the Community website news page:
http://www.ntfc.co.uk/page/StudyCentreIndex/0,,10425,00.html
To see our 1st newsletter, click on to enlarge
For more information, click on the related links on the right hand side of the page.
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To find out about Cobblers community coaching click here
To find out about Saints community coaching click here
Presentation assembly:
In January 09, Double Club students were presented with their certificates and medals by their community football coach Adrian and school Double Club teacher Beccy Roseman.Both spoke about their amazing progress during the term and how much they’d enjoyed working with the students. The group had really ‘bonded’ by the end and were showing much more positive attitudes towards their schoolwork. Let’s hope this attitude has a continued impact and stays with them back into their normal classes.
Week 12
It was our last week with Becket this week. We have really enjoyed our time at the school and think the group we have had have been brilliant. They always try their best and work hard, producing good work. They take to every activity enthusiastically and get on well with each other. End of term reports will be sent to parents and children as well as being circulated in school.
First was a football themed maths quiz, so we can monitor progress over the term. Evaluation forms and self esteem questionnaires are also ‘last week’ tasks. Then we played some team games such as ‘gutter ball’, ‘whaa’, ‘group juggling’ (with a record number of 7 balls) and word games. The two teams worked well together although when we did girls versus boys, the girls won and the boys were not happy!
In their last football session, coach Adrian had them playing an extended game. In ICT, the students used a selection of photos from the last 11 weeks to design a PowerPoint about their experiences in Double Club. They were asked to choose six different photos and talk about the activities, what they learnt in them and what they had enjoyed or not.
Fianl comments: (taken from the students’ end of term evaluation forms)
Danny: “It was great because I enjoyed everything in the Double Club”
Mateusz: “It is very good because we do fun lessons.”
Tom: “It was alright, the football.”
Lora: “The PE/rugby was alright, I liked it more than the football.”
Michael: “The learning is fun in Double Club.”
Grace: “I think it is great and I get more confident in my work.”
Shannon: “The football sessions were really boring. I have enjoyed all the other sessions. I’ve learnt my numeracy, literacy and ICT skills.”
David: “The football was the best”
Week 11
After the trip to Northampton Town Football Club in week 10, the group used adjectives to describe the stadium from photos. They had to give their opinions about the stands, seats, home changing room, shop, executive lounge, pitch and stadium complex. We talked about the kinds of sentences we wanted to use, and how to improve them. The idea was to tell someone about the stadium if they hadn’t been there before. Everyone worked hard and produced some good, detailed, thoughtful paragraphs. Afterwards, everyone recorded their work on the digital voice recorder. This caused amusement as people’s voices were different to what they had imagined! Here their recordings below.
Double Dice Spelling is a good way to get reluctant spellers to have a go. The year 8s were able to come up with several strategies for spelling which they could put to use during the game. For example: sounding words out, breaking up sounds, writing them down, visualisation and saying the word in your head. The groups were encouraged to help each other in spelling the sports themed words in order to collect their counters. This was a warm up to the spelling quiz that needed to be done as part of the end of term assessment.
WEEK 10: VISITING SIXFIELDS STADIUM
Today saw the Double Club visit the Cobblers Study Centre and Sixfields Stadium. Jean Limpitlaw, the Centre manager, led the session where students from Thomas Becket School visited the club shop to design their own Cobblers catalogue. Their task was to photograph 6 items in the shop (with a theme: youth, babies, home, away kit, gifts…) and make notes about them as to their price, sizes available, material, sponsor and variety. Back in the Study Centre’s ICT suite, the group used publisher or powerpoint to design their catalogues. They had to use language associated with advertising and marketing, as well as describe the items in detail and make fans and non-fans alike want to buy them. The club shop owner was so impressed with the students’ ideas that he asked to see the finished articles.
The group then had a brief look around the stadium: the players lounge, ticket office, west stand, press area, dugouts and directors chairs. Some people had been to a match at the ground a few weeks ago, others had never visited before. As a follow up activity for homework, the students will be writing paragraphs about their day, with a focus on adjectives. It was then back to school for the weekly football coaching session with Adrian, from the club’s community department.
These visits are a crucial part of the Double Club experience as it gives children an innovative, exciting and creative way to use their literacy, numeracy and ICT skills in a real life situation. The group enjoyed their time at the stadium and for Beccy it was a dream come true to see the club, now that she has become a huge Cobblers fan!
http://www.ntfc.co.uk/page/Home/
WEEK 9
In literacy today we looked at ‘Success and Failure’. The group first were asked to define what they thought these terms meant, then put sports photos of players showing various emotions into ‘success, failure, other’ categories. Some could have been success and failure. They described what they thought was happening in the photos, why it could be classed as success or failure (or both) and how the players were feeling. There was some emotive writing and lots of discussion about facial expressions.
For numeracy, we looked at Northants County Cricket Club’s commercial pamphlet. Pupils looked at each paragraph to find the answers they needed about marketing, sponsorship, facilities offered and promotion adjectives. They then worked out how much it cost to sponsor a player, a ball, a shirt and so on. The hardest part was working out the VAT on these items.
The ‘Whaa game’ proved very entertaining, with the whole group of us throwing the ‘whaa’ at each other.
Quick reactions were needed! We finished off with a snap mental maths card game.
In football, Adrian split the group into girls and boys small sided games. The girls grew in confidence and worked on their skills. The lads got even more competitative than usual! Adrian had a chat about sportsmanship and encouraging each other.
Val Sudlow from Northants Study Centres’ project team, and Scott Cohen from Arsenal Double Club visited the mornings sessions. To read more about this visit, http://double.northantsstudycentres.org/
WEEK 8
Today’s literacy challenge was to analyse some ‘Match of the Day’ footage of some Arsenal games, taken from Arsenal TV. Students had to answer specific questions about the action, describe play, identify football language, listen to commentator style and watch out for famous players. They also made notes covering the key points of an Arsenal vs. Sparta Prague game. These notes they turned into interesting and action-packed sentences.
As a ‘brain-break’/energiser, it was blow football, whereby teams got very competitative and almost blew their cheeks inside out trying to score goals across the table. The trick seemed to be to get low to the table and still be able to move around its sides quickly. No hands allowed, cheating!
Numeracy followed, with some fractions, ratios and percentages work around football statistics, player ratings and league tables. Then some commentator speech bubbles where pupils had to make accurate observations about what was going on in sports photos. They tried to incorporate some of the styles they had heard earlier on the ‘Match of the Day’ clips.
In the coaching session, Adrian had the group working hard with some dribbling and passing skills.
‘Sporting Excuses’ was the theme for ICT. We watched some footage of footballers making mistakes, doing silly things and play going wrong. These included worst goalkeeper moments, own goals, horrendous tackles, injuries and general mess-ups. Some of these were amusing, as well as unbelievable. Students had to write their own ‘sporting excuse’ note imagining they were in the position of one of these players, directed at their manager, team mates or fans. They were some really creative and amusing ones, blaming everything from the pitch, to weather, kit, crowd, referee, hair and team mates.
Throughout the morning, Richard Page from the DCSF was visiting the Double Club, along with Val Sudlow from Northants Study Centres. Headteacher Mr. Gardiner also joined us for the ICT session. They were all very impressed with the work being undertaken, the engagement of the pupils and their positive attitude towards their learning.
Our 3rd newsletter
WEEK 7
The literacy lesson was all about sporting headlines. Students had to match headlines with a short paragraph from their respective match reports/articles. This proved quite tricky as of course reporters use slang, play on words and sports terminology. The group found that the key was to pick out the key words and phrases from both headline and paragraph. Next pupils had to come up with their own headlines for given paragraphs. We discussed what a headline needs to be, short and snappy and attention-grabbing. There were some really good ones. The last task was to do some creative writing about a headline out of context. They have been cut from newspapers featuring rugby, cricket and football articles. Obviously we did not know the stories but could use our imaginations to create some.
In numeracy, the group did pitch measuring. They had to work out the area and perimeter of various sports pitches. They then went outside with trundle wheels to measure all the lines, circles and semi-circles on the rugby, basketball and football pitches.
Our ‘brain-break’ this week was ‘click-clacks’. This entailed lots of finger clicking, thigh slapping and clapping whilst thinking of words in a category such as animals, foods, names, football teams…. But all in time to the rhythm!
This week Adrian from the Cobblers community department started coaching a 6 week block. The group, particularly the lads, were very excited and enthusiastic. They took to the skills, drills and games with determination and a willingless to learn. The game was certainly competitative, with several people ‘throwing a strop’ a la TV premiership action! Maybe we will need those red and yellow cards in future!
In ICT, students continued with their premier places geography factsheets. They also took the time to provide comments about how their experiences of the Double Club have been so far. Click here to see these on our blog.
WEEK 6
“Working sooo hard and having sooo much fun”
The five Senses: The students watched a short DVD of when England won the Ashes. We then had an excellent brain storming session about how the cricketers could use each of their senses during the match. The students constructed interesting and descriptive sentences about the five senses.
We had a very entertaining brain break with maths snap; the students became very involved and competitive using some very good mental maths skills.
The students then completed a geography activity called Premier Places they had to place all the premier football teams on a map of England using an atlas. A few of the students carried on through some of their break so they could finish now that’s dedication!
Our last rugby session was an indoor event because of rain the students have developed some good passing skills and work well as a team.
In the ICT session the students carried on the geography activity by finding out interesting facts about the town or city of their favourite club, coming up with population statistics, main industries and famous musicians or groups.
When having a look at a students work he told me that the day had been sooo much fun and he had learnt so much about the geography of England.
WEEK FIVE
As this week is anti-racism week nationally, (October 20-25th) our class watched a DVD called ‘Show Racism the Red Card’. This is a national campaign and every football club across the country will have its own slogan and policy, including ‘Stand Up Speak Up’, ‘Tackle Racism’ and ‘Let’s kick racism out of football’. This DVD features famous players such as Rio Ferdinand, Ashley Cole and Thierry Henry talking about racist incidents in football and their experiences.
After a group discussion about racism and stadium policies, students designed a poster promoting anti-racism. They had to think of their own slogan, choose appropriate pictures and explain why racism must be stopped. They could also outline the action that they would take if anyone (fans and players alike) was heard being racist in a stadium.
An entertaining and physical ‘brain break’ is group juggling. (see week 1 below) Double Clubbers love this game and get very competitive. On this occasion we beat our first try from week 1 by eventually getting 6 balls going around the circle. Obviously this occurred after much laughing, posing, sound effects and general amusement.
The ‘Away Game’ maths activity requires pupils to cost a Cobblers team (20 people) away game journey, accommodation, food and entertainment in Bournemouth, whom NTFC play against each season. The idea is to keep costs down (but not be too cheap, the players do need to eat after all!) and convince club representatives that their plans are the best. They are certain rules to be followed. (ie: no drinking the night before the game, players must stay in a 3* hotel) Everyone had a good go at this, and when plans were compared, nearly everyone came up with similar totals. However, there were those students who were skinflints as well as those far too generous. Not sure what NTFC would say to that!
In rugby, everyone had a go at kicking, with some talented players. Coach Aldam had them trying to kick over the bar at various distances and angles. Although we did not see anyone with a Jonny Wilkinson style, we did witness some very ‘unique’ kicking techniques! They also took part in tag rugby catching games, in which the girls team worked together excellently, while the lads preferred to ‘watch and wait’. Yet again, it remained dry and sunny, hooray!
In the ICT session, we used the digital photos taken last week during the trip to the Steelbacks Study Centre and Northants County Cricket Club to detail the visit. Students had to use the information recorded on their stadium tour literacy quizzes to write descriptive paragraphs about their chosen photos. One task was to write what they thought of the stadium, what they liked and disliked.
To see newsletter 2 click here to enlarge:
Becket go to a game at Northampton Town Football Club.
Students watched the mighty Cobblers beat Yeovil Town 3-0 on Saturday 18th October 08. It was a bright and sunny day and it was great to see so many of the Double Clubbers ( and Beccy) take up the opportunity to watch a match, with their parents. It was an exciting game with Danny Jackman, Adebayo Akinfenwa and Jason Crowe scoring.
WEEK FOUR
Thomas Becket were on an away day at the Steelbacks.
The morning started with a coaching session with James Mellor. The students had excellent eye and hand co-ordination and were able to do all the activities well and enthusiastically. The session ended with a game of non stop cricket which they all put lots of effort in especially Anna and Yvonne the Study Centre manager for the Steelbacks.
The students showed off their ICT skills at the Study Centre using Apple computers and photo booth by making themselves name badges.
The students had a quiz to complete based on the tour of the cricket ground which was done exceptionally well by Anna.
They were allowed into the committee room and were able to try out the furniture.
The students had a look at the old ticket office, now used to purchase match cards and books.
In the shop they got to try on the very large hats.
For information about the Steelbacks Study Centre Click here
For information about The Northants County Cricket club click here
WEEK THREE
To start the day, pupils took part in a listening and note taking exercise (called ‘kit bag’) whereby they listened to a talk about the Northants County Cricket equipment. They discussed how to write notes (study skills) and listened out for key information on materials, health and safety, position worn by, comfort, sponsorship, flexibility, shape and cost. The helmet, wicket keeping pads and gloves, batting pads and gloves, bat, shoes and thigh pad were examined, with students having the opportunity to try them on afterwards.
Using their notes, everyone then designed a cricket shop advert detailing why people should buy their items. The class looked at examples of sports adverts and slogans and thought of their own. We talked about famous slogans or ‘tag lines’ such as McDonald’s “I’m Loving it”, Nike’s “Just do it” and Tesco’s “Every Little Helps”. These are instantly identifiable and widely recongised with their products. Some students opted for the ‘BOGOFFS’ (buy one get one free) offers, as well as enticing prospective buyers with detailed information about comfort and flexibility. Some others favoured their own ideas about why cricketer’s should wear their kit such as “It’ll make you feel confident” and “You should shop here because we have top quality kit”. They designed posters to record this information.
The ‘YES/NO’ game proved popular. (“So that’s what they were doing?!”) No, we weren’t sitting around with paper post it notes stuck to our foreheads for the sake of looking silly. We were doing a speaking and listening game involving sports players and other famous people. Working in pairs, one partner asked the other up to 20 questions to discover the identity of the stickered person on their head. They could only ask questions that their partner could answer YES or NO to and weren’t allowed to give clues. For example, they could ask one another ‘Am I a man?’, ‘Am I a tennis player?’ or ‘Am I American?’. Hopefully after not too many questions they could solve their identity. Except from Anna, as the boys kept choosing really hard footballers who she wasn’t able to guess easily due to her lack of knowledge about premiership teams!
An arty ‘brain break’ was origami T shirts. Everyone designed their own football, rugby or cricket T shirt from paper. We discussed logos, sponsorship and sports shirts, using the South African cricket world cup ones from the kit bag.
The rugby session was as usual coached by Aldam Mills from the Saints. Over the last few weeks, the group have been improving their rugby skills and we have seen them get quicker at passing and tackling as well as thinking more about the game and positioning. There are always a few warm up fun games to start with, as well as longer game to finish. The teamwork and communication has been brilliant, with everyone showing positive sportmanship and a willingness to take part.
The last lesson was ICT where the group worked on their Fantasy football teams from last week. Now that they have chosen their players, pupils used football websites to research profiles in order to write reasons for selecting them. The powerpoint presentations are looking good, with good attention to detail.
WEEK TWO
Using a Cobblers match day programme, students had to solve numeracy clues to find the right page numbers, then ‘read for a purpose’ to find the literacy information to solve a crossword. This is what we call a ‘programme trail’ and the club programmes are a great source of information for our Double Club lessons.
Next was Double Dice numeracy were we worked in groups of 4, throwing the dice for our team mates and reading aloud the mental maths sums. These were a mix of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing, as well as percentages and rounding up/down. Every time there was a correct answer, a counter was awarded to cover one of the footballs. The first to ‘score’ 6 goals, won. There was a really nice atmosphere of helping each other, with no pressure put on anyone for struggling with an answer. The staff had to keep an eye out for cheaters as students tried their hardest to throw ’1′s and ’2′s, as these were the easiest questions!
Students acted as football team managers and had to choose premiership players for a fantasy football team, only being allowed to spend £50million. As they found, this wasn’t a lot if they wanted all the best players, they had to chop and change quite a few times. Many got into ‘debt’ by several million!
As a class we ‘thought-shared’ what attributes are required of a footballer, including skills, personality, approach to media and attitude. We discussed what makes a manager more likely to choose them or not. We used Abedayor’s team as an example, taken from the Arsenal magazine.
In the ICT session, once all the players were chosen, students had to write paragraphs about each one, explaining their choice and why they liked them. Most pupils had so much player knowledge they didn’t have to research much on the internet. They had to make sure their opinions would stand up in a boardroom. Some wrote player profiles, covering personal information, career history and football skills.They had to construct a template for their team, using powerpoint or word, using textboxes, graphics, word art and inserting images. The ICT skills were good on the whole, with some creative backgrounds and layouts.
During the tag rugby coaching session, Aldam put the group through their paces practising kicking, passing, movement and changing direction. After watching the video footage earlier in the morning, it was great to build on the skills learnt the previous week. They looked espcially good in their brand new Double Club tiny T shirts!
WEEK ONE
Students met for the first time today with Anna, Helena and Beccy. Introduction and ice breaker activities included ‘getting to know you bingo’, ‘change chairs if you….’ and some circle time where staff explained the project and why pupils had been chosen. There is a misconception sometimes that Double Club is for low achievers but this is not the case. Children are chosen by their head of year/pastoral staff if they think they could benefit from some extra study support in English, maths and ICT. Sometimes pupils are lower in self esteem and confidence which the sport based activities will help improve.
Outside we played a rather maniacal game of group juggling, whereby 5 balls were launched round the circle all at the same time in the specified order. Ball skills, control, teamwork, communication and good sportsmanship skills were key here and most of the time we were in fits of laughter at all that was going wrong! But the group managed to meet the record set by other PfS groups, to get 5 balls at once going round. No time to be shy!
Player maths cards was next, a mental maths game using Cobblers sqaud numbers to formulate and solve sums. Both teams (Lawme and Lemons) worked well together and got a system going to make the sums. It got competitative and was very close all the way.
Each week a coach from one of the Northampton sports clubs visits the school for a practical coaching session. These few weeks we have Aldam Mills from Saints coaching tag rugby. Everyone put their best efforts into the small sided games, tagging, racing and movement drills. With some ‘girly’ screams and a lot of giggling, students worked on their rugby skills enthusiastically and staff were very impressed with the speed, agility and twisting/turning runs they saw. Aldam certainly made them work hard and the session was enjoyed by all. So much so, the pupils said they were ‘too tired’ to do anymore work that day!
Next term, students will be doing ‘multiskills’ as their practical with Graeme Wilson from Northamptonshire Sport. Over the 12 week block they will do the following ; SAQ, Dodging, general ball handing , throwing, catching, foot skills, Multiskills relays, tactical skills, Racket skills, striking skills, team games & creativity.
For an example activity plan, download here
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