Football/Soccer Session (Beginner): Chadderton Park Sports Club - U7- Ball Mastery 2- 4 Corner Goals

Description

Play-Practice- Play

Greet every player as they arrive for practice and outline what they will be doing tonight.

Immediately start and put players into small sided games. As the first two players arrive they begin by playing 1v1.

Phase 1 - “Deliberate Play”

Children learn best when they get to experience periods of unstructured play where they can experiment on their own, it promotes enjoyment, inclusion and development. These three factors have been proven to increase motivation to continue playing.

Role of Coach in this phase - to ensure safety, monitor the games and “check in” of the players. Monitoring the games includes making sure the games are not lopsided and providing adequate breaks. During the breaks the coach can ask guiding questions to lead the players towards the goal and objectives of the session. “Checking in ” refers to checking the player’s involvement and gauging their emotional state through active or in some cases avoidance of participation. In short showing the players how much you care about them right from the start of a practice.

Phase 2 Practice  

Using activities to create game-like situations that create problems for the players to solve and the coach to assist with the problem solving process. A simple checklist - does it look like football? Is it organised? Is it challenging? Are their repetitions? (Of the topic being worked on) . The coaching consists predominantly of positive reinforcement and normalising mistakes which are an essential part of the learning process. During this stage coaches are encourage to set up small group activities that focus on the topic being worked on that day.

Phase 3 - Play

This phase is for checking to see how much if any of the practice phase has transferred to each player. In this phase the coach sets up 2 teams of equal numbers and lets the them play uninterrupted with the coach just monitoring the safety of the players and looking at each player to assess individual learning.