Active School Committee

One of the most important partnerships in the Active School Flag programme is with the pupils of the school. It is really the pupils that run the initiative while being supported by their teachers. It is important that all pupils have an opinion on the initiatives and activities we carry out so at the beginning of each year an Active School committee is selected. It is the role of the committee to represent their class at meetings and bring forward new ideas. The committee members have many different types of leadership roles. These include, playground leaders, PE equipment monitor leaders, active line leaders, yard monitors at breaks to ensure everyone is being active and people are walking while they talk. The committee members are also very good at reminding their teachers to take movement breaks throughout the day and do the running challenge.  We aim to have a committee meeting once a month and a committee member takes the minutes of these meetings.  Take a look below at the photo of our 2022/23 Active School Committee.

Active School Suggestions Folder

To make sure that all pupils had their voices heard we have our Active School Week suggestions folder on the Active Flag notice board in the hallway.  Children can write down their ideas on a piece of paper and anonymously post it in the suggestions box.  Many of the ideas that the children suggest are planned for our Active School Week including the walk to the playground in the community!

Active School Notice Board

We have dedicated a notice board in our school to the Active School Flag.  You can get information here about who is on our committee and ways to keep active.  You can also take a look at some photos of what we were up to. We also acknowledge here all the sporting achievements of our wonderful pupils. Below is an example, Charlie who won the boxing championships.

Parents

Parents are a very important part of the Active School process.  Parents are kept updated on the Active School process through discussing it with their children, letters home from the Active School committee, the Active School notice board and the Active School page here on the website. The parents here in Scoil Chaitríona play an important role in ensuring their children have the clothes and equipment needed for P.E. and any other physical activities taking place in the school. They also support us in promoting the message that children need to be physically active for sixty minutes per day by bringing their children to after school physical activities, going for walks and cycles with their children and helping them fill out their physical activity diary for school. Our parents also have the opportunity to offer suggestions for Active School initiatives through our parents’ questionnaire, suggestions box, writing a note to a teacher or popping in to have a word with a teacher.

Our home school liaison officer, Anita McGinn, encourages our parents to keep active through the school by offering them free Zumba and Yoga classes throughout the year. She also runs a walking group every Monday morning at 9:30 where parents meet at the school and go for a 30 minute walk around the area. We always welcome new participants so if you fancy it, please do come along!

 

County Heroes

During active week we reached out to sporting legends in the county, Oisin Gallen, Donegal GAA Player and Jason Quigley, Donegal Boxing Champion who sent on videos to the children inviting them to participate in a GAA and Boxing Challenge during Active Week as well as explaining the importance of being involved in sport and encouraging children to go join their local clubs. Have a look at the videos.

Local Sports Partnership

When we started the Active School Flag process we contacted the Local Sports Partnership and the HSE Health Promotion Officer to inform them of our involvement.  They send us regular e-mails to tell us about different physical initiatives, training and courses. Following on from this, Mr. Carr & Mr. Bracken attended a course on Well-being through physical activity. We also engaged in the Sugradh le Chéile programme. Here are some pictures of the activity from that training.

Dare to Believe: Olympians Live

In April, we tuned in to our Olympians LIVE! webinar event with Olympic medallist boxer Aidan Walsh and World and 2x European Champion gymnast Rhys McClenaghan. Here we got to hear first hand how the athletes have got to the standard they are at today.

Cycle Right Cycle Training

We were very lucky to receive cycling workshops from Cycle Right Training for a number of weeks in March/April. Fifth and sixth classes learned a lot about staying safe when cycling on the road, the safety equipment that needs to be used when cycling and the correct cycling techniques to use.  The training also gave us even more opportunity to be active throughout the day and we had great fun.  Our instructor was really impressed to see how many of us had our own bikes.

Local Community

We are fortunate here in Scoil Chaitríona that there are many physical activity clubs in Ballyshannon and the surrounding areas.  During the Active School process, we carried out a survey to see what clubs the pupils were involved in. We recognise there is room for improvement, and we will continue to work on this. We found out that some children were involved in football, ladies’ football, Irish dancing, hip hop dancing, gymnastics, soccer, rugby and swimming.  We got the chance to tell each other about the different clubs and any flyers we get with information about these clubs we send home with the children to show their parents and we stick them up on the notice board. We also have local Soccer and GAA coaches who come into us for one term a year to do training with us.

Physical activity and sports achievements

Acknowledgement and encouragement is just as important in the areas of physical education, activity and sport as it is in all other curricular areas.  For any physical activity achievement, be it in school or outside school we encourage our pupils to bring in their trophy, medal and certificate etc. that they achieved and tell their classmates about it.  They also go next door to tell the other class about it and then their photo is taken to be included on our Active Well-Done Wall.