Disney stories selling the magic of football

In the Shooting Stars programme, stories, characters and concepts from Disney and Marvel franchises are used to help girls engross themselves in a story and become the characters.

The fundamental skills and movements found within football activities are cleverly built into the stories, aligned to movements of the characters.

The stories allow the girls to throw themselves into a world where movement is fun and the ball is not always a football - it can be the genie’s lamp, Olaf from Frozen or a piece of equipment to help the Avengers save the day.

They can lose themselves in the story in a safe environment, where failure is seen as a learning opportunity and using the football to score a goal is not the most important part of the game.

This helps to grow the girls' confidence to engage in further football opportunities in the playground or outside of school, while developing leadership, decision-making, problem-solving and conflict-resolution skills.

The Shooting Stars programme is made up of two initiatives - Active Play Through Storytelling and Girls’ Football Clubs.

“Football activities are cleverly built into the stories, aligned to the characters..."

Active Play Through Storytelling uses the well-known and compelling storytelling from Disney movies, such as Incredibles 2, Aladdin, Frozen 2 and Toy Story 4.

It has been developed to support ‘the beginner girl’ aged 5 to 8 in developing their physical literacy, speaking and listening skills through the medium of creative play and storytelling.

These sessions are all centred around allowing the girls to play so they can have fun, move, communicate and start their journeys towards loving sport in a safe, engaging and enjoyable environment.

The Girls’ Football Club programme is based around much-loved Disney stories and Marvel franchises such as Guardians of the Galaxy and The Avengers.

The Marvel franchises have a focus on underdogs, misfits and accidental heroes - sessions bring to life these ideas through storytelling to allow the girls to become the heroes themselves through fun participation in football.

These sessions are non-competitive and see girls aged 5-11 using the storytelling inspiration of Disney and Marvel to immerse themselves in the stories, as well as advancing their sporting journey into a girls’ only non-curricular opportunity to play football.

At these clubs, they will learn basic invasion game and football skills while engaging in imaginative play.

Research has shown the Disney-inspired football resources are engaging, memorable and familiar to the girls participating, while those putting on the sessions felt the Disney element added significantly to their resource, supported their delivery and increased interest from the girls participating.

It also found that the girls learned to develop a wider skillset, with improvements in the following areas of the FA's four-corner model:

• Physical: Girls get active and enjoy rising to the challenge week on


• Social: Opportunity to work with friends as well as girls outside of their friendship group, in turn improving communication and teamwork skills.


• Technical: Improvement week-on-week of technical skills during the drills.


• Psychological: Girls self-reported an improvement in their confidence

Storytelling as an art form requires the storyteller - us, as coaches - to be creative and have the skills to help ignite the imagination of the girls and help engross them in the story and the learning.

Free training is being provided to teachers and school staff across primary schools in England. They learn how to become the storytellers, and then lead these weekly sessions to empower girls to participate in fun and developmental physical activity and football opportunities.

"Storytelling requires coaches to be creative to ignite imaginations..."

The training involves both theory and practical-based learning, where the adult learners are taken on a journey to explore the benefits of play and fundamental movements to help them to support the challenges their girls at primary school face when engaging with physical activity and football.

They will start to understand the importance of bringing an environment to life through Disney stories where the girls are only limited by their own imagination.

In 2020-21, 1,068 teachers and school staff were trained, impacting more than 11,000 girls aged 5 to 11 participating and gaining access to football at primary school.

To find out more about accessing this training and resources, please go to:

www.girlsfootballinschools.org

USING INCREDIBLES 2 FOR A FUN WARM-UP - An 'Active Play Through Storytelling' activity

The storyteller (coach) sets the scene as the story of Incredibles 2 starts exactly where The Incredibles left off, with the Parr family preparing to use their Incredible powers to stop the Underminer destroying City Hall with his drill.

On the field, girls help to build the drill using equipment like cones and bean bags.

We then introduce them to each of the Incredibles using fundamental movement skills to differentiate each character. The girls run around and in and out of the drill becoming each of the characters.

This warm-up leads to the next part of the story, which introduces the girls to Frozone - a good friend of the Incredibles who will help them to ‘freeze’ the drill and save City Hall from the Underminers' destruction.

Through these warm-up activities, the girls get to have fun and become, as in the movie, a Super.

This type of activity gives us great insight into the players' fundamental movement skills in action - the ABC of agility, balance and co-ordination.

The girls need to have a sense of competence and confidence in these fundamental movement skills to allow us to help them scaffold the movement skills and sequences that are needed for playing a game of football.