Sports & Play
Motivating young people to learn
Education Today talks exclusively to Joe Lyons, Education, Employment, Enterprise and Skills Manager at the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation
Tell me about the Spurs Learning Zone? “The Spurs Learning Zone is a state-of-the-art classroom facility situated within the iconic venue of White Hart Lane, offering young people a fun, dynamic and unique environment in which to learn. It is an ICT suite fully equipped with an interactive whiteboard and 32 workstations to accommodate most class sizes. Currently, over 6,000 young people and adults from our local community pass through the doors of the Spurs Learning Zone every year via the various educational programmes we run in partnership with schools and other educational institutions.
“Schools value us as a partner because the unique learning environment we offer at White Hart Lane engages young people in a positive way and offers an exciting change from the school classroom. Also, many young people in our local community do not have a constant in their lives, whether at home or in school, but the Football Club and the Learning Zone offer that constant as it’s always there, the staff are the same and they can relate to the Spurs identity.”
12
www.education-today.co.uk
How do you link sport to the curriculum at primary and secondary level?
“We use sport as the hook for young people throughout the curriculum, but the way it is used differs depending on the age group. At primary level, we run intervention programmes in schools that use sport as an incentive. For example, children may attend a reading class with one of our coaches knowing that, as a result of their improvement in class behaviour and concentration levels, they gain the opportunity to participate in a football session at the end of each lesson. As football is something that interests them, it is something that they can relate to and it can help towards improving their levels of attainment.
At secondary level, where we run more specialist programmes, sport is used as the context. For instance, in Kick & Cook, our food technology programme that uses the Club kitchens and focuses on healthy diets and recipes endorsed by professional footballers. We also offer a sport curriculum with practical physical activity sessions at both primary and secondary level.”
January 2012
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32