Active School | Anacarty NS Active Schools Programme

Anacarty NS

Active Schools Programme

Anacarty National School is currently working towards its second Active Schools Flag. The Active School Flag (ASF) is awarded to schools that strive to achieve a physically educated and physically active school community.

To help us to achieve the Active Schools Flag we started by reviewing our current provisions for Physical Education, Activities and Partnerships, to identify our areas of strength and areas that require further development. We made improvements to our Physical Education and Activities provisions where needed and and introduced several fun new activities that we feel will have a real benefit to our school community.

In April 2018, we held our first Active School Week. The week included activities and events such as Wake Up, Shake Up!, Walk A Mile with a Smile, Zumba classes, a Healthy Eating Lesson, a Teddy Bears Walk for our junior and senior infants, a Circuit Training Class for our 1st, 2nd and 3rd classes and a walk to Ballysheedy Castle for our 5th and 6th classes. Active School Week will become an annual event on the Anacarty National School calendar.

Read about all our Active School Week activities on our Active School Blog.

See our Active School Week 2018 photo gallery at the bottom of this page.

Fun New Activities

Fun New Activities at Anacarty NS

Drop Everything And Noodle!

Inspired by Go Noodle we introduced our own Drop Everything and Noodle activity. This activity helps teachers get children moving by copying short activities displayed on the classroom interactive whiteboard. These daily activities help the children achieve more by keeping them engaged and motivated throughout the day.

Fun On Fridays

Every Friday in Anacarty National School is Fun On Fridays Dance Day. An outdoor activity devised by Miss Moloney that gets the children outdoors and dncing.

Aclaíocht ar Líne

Everyday our children stand in the líne three times a day for morning assembly and returning to class after breaks. So we decided to make the líne more fun. Aclaíocht ar Líne introduces short, quick actions and movements that the children can do while standing in the líne.

Find out more about out Active School activities on our Active School Blog

For more information about

the Active Schools programme visit activeschoolflag.ie

Alex

"It's the best thing ever!"

Sarah

"It's good for exercise

and it's fun."

"It's active and we

get really fit"

Ben

Physical Education

Physical Education, Activities and Partnerships

Physical Education

Our school has an up-to-date Physical Education plan and pupils are provided with one hour timetabled PE per week. Teachers use the PSSI lesson plans and all classes are taught five different PE strands each year from Athletics, Aquatics, Dance, Gymnastics, Games, Outdoor and Adventure. Our school ensures that children with special needs can play a full role in all PE opportunities.

Every child’s progress in PE is discussed with parents at Parent-Teacher meetings and feedback about progress in Physical Education is included in annual school reports.

Our school has adequate, age appropriate equipment to teach all of the PE strands and our school makes maximum use of the PE equipment available to us. Our school undertakes a PE equipment audit once a year and all PE equipment and resources are kept to a good standard.

Our school teaches the Land PAWS Water Safety Programme to support the Aquatics strand and we have begun the Supertroopers Homework Initiative in 2018.

Our school prioritised a PE strand for further development in 2018. We targeted our Dance strand this year and we have used the Go Noodle app to incorporate action dances and Zumba dance into the movement breaks in our classrooms .

We also incorporated a Music in the Yard activity every Friday for a number of weeks and learned an age appropriate Irish dance in all classes. We had a Lá Glas and Céilí to link in with St. Patrick's Day and Seachtain na Gaeilge.

During our active schools week we had a dance teacher come to the school and give everyone a taster class of Zumba dance for children.

Physical Activity

Our school provides three daily playground breaks. The full range of fundamental movement skills are promoted during break times and pupils are permitted to run. Our school yard is zoned to allow children to engage in a variety of different activities and we train senior pupils as Playground Leaders. We encourage use of sports equipment during break times.

"Do your Talking as You are Walking" is encouraged during break times. All pupils engage in an extended classroom based physical activity break on wet days and short physical activity breaks such as Go Noodle, DEAR and Bizzy Breaks are used on a regular basis.

Our school has removed "sweets as treats" and replaced it with physical activity rewards. Our school reinforces the message that children require 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day. Our school has agreed an Active School slogan and we promote physical activity when classes are lined up in the yard.

See our Active School Blog for ways we have incorporated physical activity into calendar events.

Partnerships

We have established a hardworking Active School Flag Committee and pupil members of the Active School Flag committee have been given leadership roles.

Our school has an Active School Flag notice board and suggestions box.

Our school acknowledges physical activity and sports achievements achieved during and outside of school hours.

Our school informs pupils and parents about physical activity opportunities that are available in the local community and

senior pupils have conducted a What Club Are You In? to identify physical activity opportunities in the local community.

Our school has invited different sports clubs/physical activity providers from the local community to visit our school for Active School Week, or at other times this year, to give taster sessions of their activity.

New activities are introduced each year.

We have close connections with the local community. This year we had a former pupil and one of the players on the winning Tipperary All Ireland Ladies Football team visit the school and talk to the pupils about their achievements on the playing field. The local GAA club Éire Óg Anacarty work with us to provide training in hurling and football each year and local man Michael Moore, who is involved in the local athletics club, accompanies the pupils and teachers to a County Cross Country competition each year.

As part of active schools week we invited a local dance teacher to come to the school and do a taster Zumba class with each class. We have provisionally booked her to come and do a six week block of dance with the children next year.