Who we help
Turning a love of football into a love of reading
8 Jul 2010
The 2010 football World Cup has been action-packed and emotional, with an enormous amount of material written about the games in newspapers, magazines and websites around the world. To take advantage of this excitement the NLT produced the World Cup toolkit reading resource for teachers and librarians to help encourage young people’s reading through the power of football, and published a daily episodic story by popular children’s author, Tom Palmer, called The World Cup Mystery.
The toolkit and story have proven to be huge successes with teachers across the country. Teacher Lesley Thompson from Welton CE Primary School in Northamptonshire has praised the toolkit and story, saying they created excitement and a sense of anticipation from the students as they have to wait for the new chapter every day.
She also noted the way the toolkit has engaged the more reluctant readers and writers in her class:
The reluctant readers have all been eager to read [The World Cup Mystery] and many of them are now reading other football books which we have also introduced into our class.
The pupils’ enthusiasm is evident in their own feedback on the resource:
Reading has always been boring, but his [Tom Palmer’s] stories are better than the ones I normally read.
You can still access all our World Cup resources.
