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HOW TO COACH
1. Communicating with children
Q. What three ‘C’s are the most important when coaching children?
A. Communication, communication, and communication.
Be careful what language you use with young children. They won’t necessarily understand football-words like ‘trap’, ‘time’, ‘man-on’, ‘turn’ etc. To a 3-year old, a ‘dribble’ is not a word they associate with football. You may have to teach the children these words, or you may choose to use their words instead. Use language that is relevant / appropriate to the age/stage (needs) of the children in the group.
Squatting when talking to children will mean you are on their eye-line and they aren’t forced to strain their necks to look at you. If you are talking to a group of children, you may find it easier to keep them calm by squatting, as this will encourage them to also sit. Alternatively, you may choose to have a “team-bench” which is your meeting place for your group – somewhere the children sit as you (briefly!) explain what is happening next.
Be careful with your use of the work “Stop!” Try to find more imaginative ways of getting the attention of the group. Use the music to help you.
Remember that we all learn in a wide variety of different ways. Some sports halls will have whiteboards that you can use to assist your teaching. Or you can use a small portable A4 whiteboard. This is a very valuable coaching tool, and can save lots of teacher-talking-time. It will also help those children who are learning visually.
2. Questioning
Questions are a great teaching tool. They can challenge players to think, elicit new ideas, and check comprehension and understanding. Coaches should plan which questions to use in a particular activity or game. Think about what you want the children to learn in the activity, and then plan how you can help lead them there through the use of appropriate questions. Planning which questions to ask at what time in the session (and exactly how you will ask them) should be part of your session planning. Questions should relate to the learning outcomes you want to achieve.
Examples of questions: How many ...? (touch) What stops you ...? (space) How will you know ...? (decisions) How can you see ...? (scanning) How can your team-mate help you? What can you do to help your team-mate?
Remember questions aren’t the only teaching tool we can use, and don’t overdo the use of questioning. The more questions you ask, the less power they have. Sometimes children will not know how to say the answer to a question, or they will try to explain and take ages. In these situations, ask them to show you instead (“Can you show me…?”).
Do you need to stop the entire group in order to ask them something? If the question is only relevant to two or three of the children, then just get them in instead and let the rest of the children continue to play and learn.
3. Motivating Children
Here are some good tips for motivating players:
- Frequent praise for good play, ideas or effort. Relate the praise to a specific action carried out during the session ("I liked that turn Jade, you really moved quickly with the ball into a new space!").
- Change activities on a regular basis, every 10-15 minutes. Children have a limited attention span and need tasks to be changed or made more difficult depending upon age/stage
- Include the players/children in the planning process, perhaps give them the option of two activities. Or help them to set their own rules. Simply asking the players to set up their own gates for a dribbling activity usually increases motivation and focus through a wider sense of ownership of the activity.
- If someone misbehaves, criticise the action or behaviour NOT the person
- Use points as rewards e.g “You get 5 points if you can pass against the wall before you score!”
- Challenge the players – e.g. “Can you stop Billy from turning?”
- Ask players to give themselves marks out of 10 for how they are doing on an activity. Ask them to set themselves a target (e.g. 9/10) and then give them 5 minutes to see if they can get there.
4. Managing difference
In any group / activity / task, you will have some players who find the activity easy and some who find it difficult. Different groups will emerge:
Forging Ahead - These children excel at the task. They are often seen as the star players, by their coach and peers. It is vital that these players are challenged so that they continue to develop and fulfil their potential.
Striving to Keep up - These children may need the task to be made slightly simpler, or allowed to carry out the task in a manner that suits their needs. There may be many reasons why these players are struggling to keep up. The reasons could be to do with physical capabilities, technical skill, or an understanding of the practice.
“The skill of the coach is to identify which players within the group need to be challenged further, which players are OK to continue with the original task, and which players need support in order to catch up with the rest of the group”
– The FA’s ‘The Future Game’, 2010
How can you make the task easier for those who are striving to keep up? How can you make the task more challenging for those who are forging ahead? Use the STEPs template (below) to help you find ways of changing individual tasks.
It is very important for coaches to consider how to amend the task for certain players. These changes to sessions should be thought about before the session and should comprise part of the coach’s session plan.
Coaches don’t need to stop the session in order to assist those players who are struggling, or to challenge those who are finding it too easy. In fact, it may not be a good idea to single out those players in front of their peers. Instead, coaches can have a quick chat with players during the activity. (e.g. to challenge a player finding something easy: “Josh, can you keep your head-up while you receive the ball, and use the other foot to make the pass?”)
5. Adjusting and Progressing sessions using STEPs
Good coaches know when and how to adjust and progress activities. These coaching decisions are critical in order to deliver great sessions. Coaches can use the STEPs template to help them consider how an activity needs to be altered to fit the age/stage (needs) of the children in the group.
Space - Challenge or support players by varying the size and shape of the space that you work in. A smaller space will make a drill more challenging. Instead of using a square for a possession session, try and use a triangle or a circle to challenge the players. A long, narrow pitch will encourage a very different type of attacking and defending than a short, wide pitch.
Task - Vary the difficulty of the task or challenge so that all participants can achieve success. Success is an important part of learning. Success is a great motivating tool, as long as it is not too easy and not too hard. If the task is too hard or too easy, children will get bored or frustrated with the session. That may be evidenced by disruptive behaviour.
Equipment – E.g. use a smaller ball to work with to see if the children can still achieve success. Or turn the goals round so a team can no longer shoot from distance.
In the set-up to the left, we see that the objective of the game is to knock a ball off one of the cones. When this happens, the player steals the ball and cone and takes them back to set them up at their own end. That player's team now has less cones to aim for. And the opposing team has more cones to aim for.
People – Teams and opposition should usually be evenly-matched, but coaches can change this set-up to give a particular group of children a new challenge. (e.g. in a 3v5 - “Can you three players defend these two goals for the next minute without conceding a goal?”). Children learn from each other, and they don't always need a coach to tell them what to do. Often, they will pick things up by working with and watching their peers.
6. Winning and Losing
Some MoF players will play in competitive leagues for local clubs. But MoF does not put teams into regular competitive games. During sessions the focus should not be on winning and losing. However, if some players want to keep score, then that’s up to them. It’s their game and they should decide for themselves if winning is important to them. MoF doesn’t believe it is up to adults to tell children how much/little they should want to win.
For older players in the 6-8 and 9-11 age-groups, there may be times when you want to keep score in order to create a more intense environment.