Teacher resources

"Teachers make great youth football coaches because they understand how children learn."  (Les Howie, FA Head of Grassroots Coaching)

Children may know a lot about football, such as the weekend scores and their favourite football players, but whether you follow football or not, it is the teachers who know how to help young people learn.

We aim to provide support for all the primary school teachers who take part in The FA Tesco Skills programme, working with our Skills coaches to teach their primary pupils skills, teamwork and confidence which transfer across all activities in the National Curriculum for Physical Education.

We believe our coaches and the resources and videos on this website will provide you with the inspiration and tools you need to develop your lesson plans.  The best thing you can do now is engage with The FA Tesco Skills programme and to see the impact for yourself.

Medium Term Plan

Use the medium term plan to forecast what you would like to cover with your learners over the medium term.  We suggest the medium term be considered as anywhere from a 6 week half term to a 12 week term.  Draft what activities you will devise and what learning points you will cover during this period to achieve your learning objectives.  Pupil assessment criteria can be taken directly from the assessment matrix available on this website.  Use the medium term plan below as a working document.  Do not be afraid to make changes and annotations over the course of the medium term period.  Learning will be unpredictable, so ensure your medium term plan is flexible to accommodate the different rates of learning of your pupils.

Medium Term Plan (example) 

Medium Term Plan (blank)

Short Term Plan

Use the short term plan documents to plan each individual session, completing the key areas of intended learning outcome, learning activities, learning points and attainment levels.  Check the activities you choose to enable to pupils to achieve intended learning outcomes and allow the learners to achieve the attainment levels you set.

Short Term Plan (example) 

Short Term Plan (blank) 

Assessment Matrix

A football specific assessment matrix exists for each of the four strands of the National Curriculum Physical Education; Acquiring and Developing, Selecting and Applying, Evaluating and Improving and Knowledge and Understanding of Fitness and Health.  Within acquiring and developing and selecting and applying, attainment levels are split into football specific activities to provide you with bespoke assessment criteria for a specific area of the game.

Assessment Matrix - Selecting and Applying

Assessment Matrix - Evaluating and Improving

Assessment Matrix - Knowledge and Understanding of Fitness and Health

Over the medium term, try to focus on just one football specific area of the game so you can focus the pupils learning and your own planning. The assessment levels are a guide.  Be flexible as there will always be pupils who fall outside the expected range of attainment.  Within each learning activity of the short term plan, try not to assess over more than two National Curriculum strands to focus your observations.  Use the matrix as an 'assessment for learning' tool.  Use the information you obtain each week to inform your planning and expectations for the following lesson.