Active Schools

1. Physical Education

Scoil Bhríde Shelagh is committed to providing high quality Physical Education to all pupils within our school. All of our classes receive 60 minutes of formal PE lessons each week, if the rain gets in our way, we love to do our PE lessons in the classroom as best we can. All classes are taught Athletics, Dance, Games and Outdoor and Adventure each year.

Teachers use a wide variety of resources to guide them in delivering good quality PE lessons to the children. PSSI Lesson Plans are widely utilised throughout the school.

Chosen Strand to Focus on: Games

As a whole school staff, we sat down and decided to choose Games as the area to focus on this year in Scoil Bhríde . To that end we began by carrying out a survey of the children’s favourite games in each of the classrooms. We ensured that we had the necessary sports equipment needed to support the teaching and learning of games in our school such as new footballs, rugby balls and bibs for teams. All staff made a special emphasis on teaching games in PE lessons with the warm-up for most lessons consisting of small games to promote movement. As a way of introducing our students to games and sports they may never have tried, we brought in local coaches and read up on the necessary rules and guidelines for each of the games.

What is the Active Schools Flag?

The Active School Flag is a Department of Education and Skills initiative supported by Healthy Ireland. The Active School Flag is awarded to schools that strive to achieve a physically educated and physically active school community. The process aims to get more schools, more active, more often. Our challenge over the year of 2022/23 will be to find interesting and exciting ways to energize the school day because active children are happy learners!

The Active School Flag will be awarded to schools that:

• Adhere to DES guidelines regarding PE timetable provision for all students.
• Teach a broad and balanced PE curriculum.
• Inform and invite the whole school community to participate in the ASF process.
• Self-evaluate current provision in terms of PE, Physical Activity and Partnerships.
• Plan, implement and monitor improvements for each of the aforementioned areas.
• Organise an ‘Active School Week’ as part of the annual school calendar.

Our Active School Flag Committee

Once the committee was chosen, our first job was to have a poster and slogan competition in the school. The children were given the opportunity to come up with a catchy slogan and an eye catching picture to match. The committee and the teachers worked together to choose a winner. The successful student’s slogan will be used as our Active School Flag Slogan for the year ahead.

Our committee has been getting together for weekly meetings, during which we have brainstormed ideas on how we can encourage the school to be more active in a fun and inclusive way.

The pupils on the active schools committee have been given leadership roles including:

• Active line leaders at the end of break- 10 seconds of activities at the end of the break, variety of 5.
• Playground leaders.
• Looking after the sports baskets used at break times.
• Keeping the P.E. store neat and tidy.
• Making sure all the equipment in the P.E. store are placed in the correct baskets/bags.
• Carrying out surveys.
• Reporting any messages back to their class teachers and classmates.
• Organising and helping set up equipment for Sports day/ Be Active ASAP/ Santa Dash etc.
• Organising equipment and looking after their teams during 10@10.

Our Active Schools Flag Slogan Winner

2. Physical Activity

Decreasing Sedentary Time: Active Breaks

As a whole school we have implemented some new ideas around the school and during the school day. The committee came together and came up with a few ideas to help us do this. The most popular choice they brought to the classrooms was the introduction of D.E.A.D time ( Drop Everything And Dance). We have incorporated this idea into the classroom for 5-10 minutes during the day.

The Mile a Day challenge was also great for allowing the children extra time to get up and moving during the busy school day, not to mention a great opportunity for some fresh air.

The introduction of movement breaks throughout the day within the class was also another wonderful idea from our committee. To help us with these, each of the teachers was given some of the posters and powerpoint ideas from the Irish Heart Foundation initiative : Bizzy Breaks. These are displayed in the classrooms as a guide. The children enjoy these very much.

So What Have we Done so far?

• Use of playground equipment at lunchtime (each class has been given the opportunity to choose some equipment that they can play with during yard time).
• Game of the week/month (the playground leaders will be teaching their class and the younger classes a new game to play in the playground each week, for example ‘snatch the bacon ‘hopscotch’ ‘x’s and o’s’ etc.
• Active Break Every Day- during the month of January, our active break each day was D.E.A.D. (Drop Everything And Dance). Our active schools committee came up with this idea. The teachers chose a song and the children got up and moved to it. It was great fun!
• 10@10- our committee members have made sure to remind class teachers as often as possible to complete a 10@10 video each day to allow the children to get up and moving.
• GoNoodle- the children and staff alike love this resource. It is a firm favourite, particularly when the children don’t get outside due to wet or frosty weather. It’s a great one to shake off the cobwebs after the weekend too.
• GAA- the whole school participated in 6 weeks of Gaelic Football coaching with Aoife. Below you will find some pictures of the children getting stuck into the new skills, games and rules Aoife taught them.
• Rugby- Miss O ’Driscoll’s 3rd-6th class were lucky enough to receive a few weeks of rugby training from Tiernan Gonnelly from Leinster Rugby. The children thoroughly enjoyed each session and gave it their all.
• Fit Fridays- Ms. Minnock’s class have been participating in Fit Fridays over the last few weeks.

March Updates

Our PE Storeroom

As we continue working towards the Active Schools Flag, our committee took on one of their toughest jobs yet. The PE Storeroom . First of all, we took everything out and began to take an inventory of what we had. While some of the members of the committee saw to the inventory of equipment, the rest of us got to work tidying and cleaning out the room itself. Next, we put everything back and found new places for some of the equipment. Once everything had a place, we got to work placing our new laminated labels. The committee went from class to class and informed the children and staff of the new rules in relation to the room, to ensure it remains clean and tidy and to take note of what they use so it is returned to the right place.

A little before picture of the job our committee were about to undertake…

And the finished product…… after quite a few days of hard work, our committee were finally finished. What an improvement!!

Run Around Ireland Challenge 2023

On March 6th, our school began the ‘Run around Ireland Challenge( 2023)’. This challenge is a great way to build physical activity into the school day and to bring learning outdoors.

It also supports the Athletics strand of the PE programme and gives students the opportunity to develop good running technique. Each class was given a copy of the chart to document their progress each day, as well as a map of Ireland with destinations and goals to work towards.

Although the rain and snow have gotten in our way a few times, we have still achieved loads of kms as a whole school so far. Where will we run to next?

Some of our staff and children participating in the challenge.

Surveys

In order to figure out what more we can do to promote a physically educated and physically active school community, our committee have created these surveys. They have created one for both students and parents.

Below are the links to the surveys for both to complete. We need this information and these results to help us in our work towards achieving the Active Schools Flag.

• Student Survey
• Parent Survey

Playground Leaders

Our committee members are enjoying their roles as Playground leaders. They have a very important role in encouraging the younger pupils to be active during lunchtime. The classes have been given a rota to follow while participating in playground games on their designated days. The playground leaders also have a rota so that they can engage in their roles to the best of their abilities. They are responsible for organising the equipment, setting up the games in the yard and packing up afterwards. They have introduced a great selection of games such as obstacle races, parachute activities, skipping challenges and activities with hula hoops. Each week the leaders create new games, activities and then demonstrate and teach these to the junior classes.

One of the new ideas our Playground Leaders introduced to Lunch Time is the activity stations. On Tuesdays and Thursdays our Leaders set up some fun and exciting stations for anyone to join in and have fun at.

Rota for Playground Leaders

Rota for use of Equipment

Some of our classes enjoying their yard time with the PE equipment. Our Playground Leaders enjoyed distributing the equipment and showing the children how to use some of it. Our committee devised some rules to follow while using the equipment during the breaks.

Rules for using Equipment During Breaks

• Pick one thing at the start of lunch and keep it until the end.
• Give it to someone else instead of leaving it.
• Leave the equipment back outside the shelter.
• One item per person.
• Don’t forget your manners!
• Have fun

Active Learning

As a way of making our classroom more active, we decided to introduce new ways of learning our tables and practising our counting. Each day at the beginning of our maths lesson, we practise our tables for the week and our counting from 2s all the way to 12s. The children choose the movements and exercises we do for each set. Have a look at the children go!

Active Walkway

Now that the good weather is slowly but surely on it’s way, we have created and introduced our “Active Walkway” to the school. The Active Schools committee came together to decide on a route, we then laminated our signs and places them around the school grounds. Once it was ready, we invited the classes out to try it out and to try some of the fun exercises at each signpost.

3. Partnerships

Scoil Bhríde is proud to have partnered with numerous local community groups and sporting organisations this year.

We reached out to the “Louth Local Partnerships” rep to help us out. We have been very lucky to have had some great coaches and visitors into the school as a result. As Games was our focus for this year, we wanted to become more knowledgeable about some of the Games that are popular in our locality, as well as improve and learn new skills.

Before Christmas, we had Aoife teaching the whole school some GAA skills. She came to us for 6 weeks and each class group was lucky enough to get an hour of training a week. The children really enjoyed it, so much so that they swapped lunchtime soccer for Gaelic Football.

After Christmas, 3rd-6th class engaged in weekly training sessions with Tiernan Gonnelly from Leinster Rugby. Tiernan is a past pupil of the school and from the local area. The children had a great time every week with him and tried out their tag rugby skills along with learning the rules and skills needed for rugby.

In May, the school have begun a partnership with local secondary school “Della Salle”. Transition Year students are coming out to the classes each week to teach them new games and sports.

Some of the children practising their newly acquired GAA skills back in November

Miss O’Driscoll’s 3rd-6th class braving the frosty and icy conditions

Miss O’Driscoll’s 3rd-6th class braving the frosty and icy conditions to “ try” something new with Tiernan. The children thoroughly enjoyed their first week of rugby training.

Basketball

As our focus strand for the year was “Games”, the next one on the list to try for the children was basketball. They started out with simple drills such as the ones shown in the photos below. As they became more comfortable with the ball, we added in some trickier elements to the drills, including shooting. Over time, we were able to increase the distance from the net so they could try for longer shots.

After that, the children played in mini games of basketball, with 5 on each team. This helped us to become more familiar with the rules and playing accordingly.

What club are you in?

There is quite a good variety of clubs available in the locality which offer our pupils a number of ways to keep active outside of school. Our committee recently conducted a survey to see what clubs our pupils are part of and to see what sports they do outside of school time. The results of this survey proved to us just how active our students are! They also showed us which sports and clubs are most popular amongst our students.

For your information, here is a list of the sports undertaken by children in our school in various clubs around the locality.

List of local clubs

• Soccer – Shamrocks Football Club Dundalk, St. Dominics Dundalk
• Gaelic – Naomh Malachy, Kilkerley
• Gymnastics – Gym Trex, Crossmaglen
• Irish Dancing – Scoil Mona, Malachys Hall
• Hip-Hop Dancing – Dancilious/Inniskeen
• Swimming – BallyMac Hotel Dundalk, Infinity, Ardee, Aura Dundalk
• Camogie – crossmaglen
• Karate – Newry

Bike Week 2023

Bike Week took place on the 15th-19th May. To celebrate this, we reached out to our Louth Local Partnerships coordinator to see what we could do. We were very luck that Barry organised a cycling coach to come to our school for the day on Thursday 18th.

Carl came out to us from his local bike shop in Inniskeen, he is an avid cyclist and coach. He went through bike safety, road signals and more with the children. Not to mention the endless fun games and cycling drills he organised for the children. They had a brilliant day.

4. Active Schools Week

You can view our Active Schools Week here.

5. Active Schools Committee 2023/2024

Meet Our Newest Members of the Committee

6. Receiving the Flag

We are absolutely delighted to announce that in June of 2023, our school received the Active Schools Flag. All of the hard work that the school community and committee put in paid off.

All of our children received a certificate of participation and our Active Schools Committee received a special certificate too.

Here are some photos of our flag raising ceremony.