Film: Manchester United and Active Literacy

[TEACHER]: Power of the badge is really important. I think as soon as you walk into a classroom, as Manchester United, we automatically capture their imagination and their interest. I think the Primary Stars programme is fantastic for the children but a lot of the stuff we’ve introduced has been around learning about spelling and the importance of reading. We also do numeracy and try and develop their social skills for the future. They always keep us entertained, that’s the main thing. I think the staff, we love working with this age group in particular.

[CHILD 1]: Do you know anything about Fred the Red?

[CHILD 2]: He’s red.

[CHILD 3]: He supports Manchester United, always.

[CHILD 4]: A devil monster.

[COACH]: Can we say hello to Fred?

[CHEERING]

[Child 5]: You have to throw a ball into the bucket then go and get a letter off him and give him a high five.

[COACH]: When you get a letter, take it back to your team. You will have to try and create a word with the letters that you get. Three, two, one!

[CHILDREN SHOUT]

[TEACHER]: I’ve been doing this for around ten years now and I just can’t imagine myself doing anything else. Especially with primary school-aged children.

[CHILD 1]: We’re tried to make “Fred the Red” but we didn’t have the ‘d’.

[BACKGROUND MUSIC]

[COACH]: Okay guys, so what letters have you got? What words have you been looking for there? What can you get?

[TEACHER]: It’s very key to us that we feed back to the parents about the positive things that the children are doing.

[INTERVIEWEE]: Luke loves football, anyway. He plays it quite a lot and it’s just nice seeing him being able to learn through playing football.

[CHILD 6]: When you’re naughty you get a yellow, and then when you’re naughty again, you get a red.

[CHILD 3]: I liked it today because it was so cool.

[CHILD 2]: Take that one

[GIGGLING]

[TEACHER]: I find the Primary Stars programme very inspirational. It’s about saying there’s a bigger world out there and there’s so much more to learn, and introducing them to new experiences that they probably never thought would be possible. And by doing that at an earlier age, as they get older, they’re not afraid to learn new things or follow a career aspiration that they may have thought wasn’t an option to them.