Kick into Reading
Professional storytellers, led by Dr. Patrick Ryan, train members of football clubs (community coaches, education officers, academy players and, in some cases, players) to create and tell stories verbally, and to perform picture books, prose stories and poems. Each club then delivers five days of storytelling performances for children from local schools, based in public libraries.

NCFC Study Centre ran a 5 day event in January 2008, during which time over 600 children were entertained by footballers in their local libraries. We are running a one off Kick Into Reading session at the Aylsham Big Book Bash in September 2008.

Playing with Words
Playing With Words (PWW) is a school based reading initiative that sees Football League clubs challenging primary and secondary school classes to read 100 books within the space of a term, earning a special reward from their club once they reach the target.

Each partner school receives brand new books as inspiring reading resources and for every book read by a pupil, one club crest sticker is added to a giant PWW club wall chart. As the group get closer and closer to their class target the pupils become more and more motivated to read!

NCFC Reading Champion
Norwich City have their very own Reading Champion, Norwich and England Under-19 striker Chris Martin. Chris knows the importance of reading -be it books, magazines, internet sites- and wants to tell as many would-be football stars as possible that it will help them in the future if they can get into the habit of reading. As well as being photographed enjoying a good book, Reading Champions make occasional appearances at local schools and libraries to discuss their favourite reads.

2008 is National Year of Reading.

If you would like NCFC Study Centre to help you to organise a reading event in your school or local community then please contact Paul Wickens on paul.wickens@norfolk.gov.uk.