Active School Programme

The Active School Flag is awarded to schools that aim to make their school community an active one by engaging in as much physical activity as possible, providing physical education to their pupils and creating partnerships with local and national sporting organisations. Our school has been working hard in these areas for the last number of years and received our first flag in 2016. Right now, we are busy working on renewing or Active Flag status. Here are some of the things that we are doing…

Active School Committee

Our school has a committee to help us make sure we can be as active as possible and to organise the numerous events that take place throughout the year. This year’s committee is made up of pupils from 1^st class to 6^th class. They bring feedback from each class, new ideas on how we can improve and are extremely important in setting up and running activities such as our Playground Leaders. Watch out for their blue jackets!

Physical Activities:

Active Homework

Every class in the school gets active homework on the day that they have P.E. It can be anything from jumping jacks to going for a walk, to helping with the housework. It is designed to be fun and active. Here is this week’s homework…

Junior classes:

Skip on the spot for 30 seconds

Go for a 10 min walk or run (with parents)

Do 20 star jumps

Senior classes:

Do 10 squats

10 mins of activity: choice of walking/running/cycling/scooting/soccer/basketball etc.

Dance to one song on the radio.

10@10

Each class has been partaking in the 10@10 lessons. Children all over the country have been taking part by doing 10 minutes of activity in their classroom at 10 O’clock every day for a number of weeks.

The Daily Mile

The children are also taking part in the Daily Mile. Each class goes for a short 10/15 minute break to run a mile during the day at a pace they find comfortable. The emphasis is on fun, improving yourself and getting healthier. It is not competitive. Many other schools around Ireland are taking part in this programme. More information can be found on the Daily Mile website.

Playground Games and Leaders

Our playground leaders are busy creating, organising and running games in the Junior and Church yards during lunchtime. They have set up a variety of stations for pupils to increase their enjoyment and activity levels. Our Junior pupils have been enjoying penalties and throwing games so far, while skipping has proved to be a big hit with our older classes. Well done to the playground leaders and committee members for doing a great job.