Our Active School Committee are busy preparing for Active Schools Week! They have been visiting the classrooms and talking to their schoolmates about what activities we will be taking part in. Everyone is very excited. The committee also have been teaching the steps to the Cha Cha Slide to each class, which our whole school will perform on Friday as part of our Day of Dance!
Friday brought an end to our running initiative for March. For the past month, our staff and pupils have been encouraged to ‘Drop Everything and Run’ once a day, every day.
Today our Active Schools Committee met to discuss and evaluate the initiative. Here are some comments the boys themselves had to share about running every day.
“It’s very good exercise.”
“It made us fit.”
“It was fun and it’s a break from work. It was good to do the laps everyday.”
“Exercise is good for our brain.”
“In First Class we don’t get as much G.A.A. so it was nice to be active.”
“I learned how to run slower and control my breath so I could run for longer.”
Our Active School Committee have been working away this year coming up with ideas for our school.
They even found a way to be active during their meeting!
All of our classes are taking part in DEAR (Drop Everything and Run) for the month of March. Every day the Junior Infants are running 3 laps of the school, the Senior Infants are running 4 laps of the school and the First Classes are running 5 laps! The boys are focusing on running at a steady pace and having fun!
Thanks to the hard work of our Parents’ Association, we now have a great variety of PE equipment for the boys to use. As you can see in the photos, we store the equipment in clear boxes which enable both staff and children to see at a glance what is on the shelves. We also have bags with footballs, basketballs and Gaelic footballs.
In 2018/2019 we prioritised Dance as our P.E. strand for further development.
Two of our teachers attended the Move Well, Move Often seminar on the 6th November 2018 in Fitzpatrick’s Castle Hotel (Education Centre, Blackrock). The seminar was facilitated by the PDST. The Move Well, Move Often initiative focuses on developing the physical literacy of the pupil through the lens of fundamental movement skills. Seminar 2 focused on stability skills. In the seminar teachers were given a range of resources and tools to support the teaching of fundamental movement skills through physical education. The resources include a Teacher Guide and three Activity Books.
On the day, teachers took part in active P.E. lessons which focused on the fundamental movement skill of stability, with specific emphasis on landing and balancing techniques. Teachers also gave each other feedback by way of peer assessment.
As a follow up to attending this seminar, the teachers who attended the course went through the powerpoint presentation with the teaching staff and then taught the ‘Dance Around Ireland’ lesson to fellow teachers. This dance was then taught to pupils in P.E. lessons.
Folk Dance
Each year group held a Céilí in March 2019 as part of Seachtain na Gaeilge. Our Gaeilge coordinator photocopied resources for dance lessons and distributed these together with traditional Irish dancing music to all classes. The Junior Infant classes held a Ceilí Mór in the hall on Tuesday 12th March. The Senior Infant classes also held a Céilír Mór in the hall on Tuesday. Each of the three First Classes held their own Céilí in the hall on Tuesday and Wednesday.
All of the boys really enjoyed the Ceilí this year.
To promote activity levels at home, we are now recommending that the boys spend 10 mins every day on Active Homework. The boys have brought home 4 pages of suggested activities. These are short activities that can be done anywhere with no equipment necessary. Every day, choose three activities from the pages. Remember to vary the activities so that you don’t do the same ones every day! Maybe the boys might encourage their family members to get involved and get active with them!
Enjoy!
