Active School – Knocknacarra Educate Together NS

Our school community received our first Active School Flag Award in 2019. We achieved this by increasing levels of physical activities in our daily lives (both in school and at home), looking at specific areas of the PE curriculum, ensuring that all aspects of the curriculum are being taught and creating links with sporting agencies and community groups in our local area. The main goal of participating in this scheme is that a sense of health, well-being and physical activity will continue to be fostered in our school. We are currently in the process of renewing our Active Flag.

After some general information about our work towards achieving an Active Flag, you will find on-going updates of our progress in four categories:

Physical Education

Physical Activity

Active School Week

and

Partnerships.

Our ASF co-ordinator oversees a committee comprised of staff members and pupils.
Discretionary time throughout the year is being used by teachers and qualified coaches to coach the children in a range of non-competitive activities including individual and team sports. For example, swimming lessons are taking place for 1^st class and above in the third term. Gaelic football and hurling skills are taught after school as well as athletics and basketball.
Each class is provided with at least 1 hour of timetabled Physical Education per week. This is comprised of at least two 30-minute lessons.
Our PE Curriculum Policy was drafted by teachers as part of the Active School Flag process in 2018. It was ratified by the Board of Management. This plan will be reviewed and amended by staff on a regular basis. All staff members have access to the PE plan as well as the PDST lesson plans for teaching all aspects of the PE curriculum.
An audit of all PE equipment was made and an itemised list ongoing acquisition of new equipment takes place.
The specific area of focus within the curriculum was the Games Strand for our first Active Flag. This year the school is focusing on the Dance Strand for our flag renewal.
We are aware of the importance of being physically active on rainy days when the children cannot play outside. If the children are unable to go outside due to rain, each teacher ensures that he or she gets at least 10 minutes of physical activity that day. Each class has a ‘Go-noodle’ or ‘Just Dance’ account.
We are incorporating physical activity into our everyday lessons. For example, as part of Maths Week, all classes went on an maths trail. Walks around Knocknacarra, Cappagh Park and Bearna Woods have become more active and fun as well as educational.
We have an ASF notice board whereby we inform our school community of our progress to date and any upcoming school events.
All the children and staff love to dance in KETNS. We have explored dance at events such as the Halloween disco, Christmas disco. Every Friday the children dance in the yard listening to music on the school’s “party rocker” using a school’s playlist.
We have liaised with the Health Promotion Officer with the HSE, and our school co-ordinator attended a Health Promotion Healthy School’s activity day in March 2018. All staff are aware of the importance of a healthy and balanced diet along with an active lifestyle.
The KETNS yard is kept very busy. All the children are encouraged to run and travel freely around the yard. Ball and tag games are permitted and encouraged. The older children often teach the younger children new and exciting games. Yard markings were painted by a volunteer parent last in Spring 2019. The yard is divided into zones to facilitate different activities such as basketball, soccer, four square, skipping rope and running games.
The school creates opportunities to exercise where emphasis in on fun e.g. active line where the children do different activities every morning during small break. Each day a different child from each class leads the activity. All classes engage in Busy Breaks throughout the day.
Classes regularly take running breaks, and in the past we participated in a challenge of running around Europe.
Every Thursday the children get ‘active homework’ where they are encouraged to get not only themselves physically active but also their other family members physically active too.
The school has sent teams of students to hurling and soccer blitzes. An athletics team has represented the school at Galway City Sports. We are in the process of purchasing sports kits for school teams.
Active School Week takes place annually in May.

Physical Education

Damhsa Gaelach/Irish Dancing in Rang a Dó

Damhsa Gaelach sa Halla Rang a Dó are learning some Irish Dance steps in PE class. As well as learning ...
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Athletics in First Class

First Class took part in running relays. They worked in groups and ran to the cone number the teacher called ...
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Creative Dance in Rang a 3

Rang a 3 have been exploring creative dance in PE lessons. They have been developing the fundamental movement skill of ...
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Gymnastics with Senior Infants

Today we did a gymnastics lesson with Senior Infants. First, they did some balancing exercises and locomotor movements. Then, out ...
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Games: Fifth Class playing basketball

Today fifth class took advantage of the good, weather and played football outside in the school yard ...
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Gymnastics with Senior Infants

Today the Senior Infants did some gymnastics for PE. They took it in turns to perform wide legged rolls with ...
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Rang a 5 Basketball Skills

Rang a 5 had lots of fun learning how to dribble and shoot! ...
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New PE equipment

Sarah and Sarah-Jane recently attended an excellent day-long course as part of the Move Well, Move Often Programme that targets ...
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Obstacle course at the Spring Fair

As we started preparing for the Spring Fair, our first in three years, we discovered we were not going to ...
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Physical Education (PE) with Second Class

Today 2nd Class were practising their basketball skills. They had great fun dribbling and doing chest passes and bounce passes ...
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Physical Activity

Yard Zones

One of the things we have kept from the various ways of trying to stop the spread of Covid during ...
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New soccer goals

After a very effective campaign by the Student Council, it was agreed to purchase goals for the yard-time soccer games ...
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Bizzy Breaks

Here are 5th Class having their Bizzy Break, a movement break. 2nd Class having their Bizzy Break, a stretching break ...
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Bizzy Breaks – School Staff start a trend

Bizzy Breaks or movement breaks have always been used throughout the school day to help our students to take a few ...
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Fun Friday Halloween Disco

On the last day before the mid-term break the teachers decided to take advantage of the unusually mild weather. Not ...
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Halloween Active Line

Creepy Friday! we break up today for the id-term break and our students are doing their Active Line today in ...
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European Day of Sports

Today our school celebrated European Sports day. As it was a very wet day outside classes were forced to celebrate ...
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All School Yoga

Today every class in the school had a half hour Yoga lesson, this was organised as part of three initiatives ...
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Circus Skills in Barna Woods

The Junior Infants practiced some Circus Skills in Barna Woods with Amélie Bal. There was....... Balancing Climbing and a bit ...
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Active Line Activity in the April Sun

Active School Line in the Sun. Matt leading the Junior and Senior Infants in Star Jumps ...
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Active School Week

This is what Third Class got up to during Active School Week

Third Class made a real effort this week to capture their activities during Active School Week. Here they are playing ...
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Fourth Class enjoying Active School Week

Fourth class took part in a treasure hunt during Active School week. Their teacher visited Barna Woods early to hide ...
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Fifth class and their Active School week activities

This week 5th Class have been very busy exploring in Barna Woods and generally enjoying the sunshine while playing ball ...
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More throwing and catching with our Junior Infants

The Junior Infants practiced their hand eye co-ordination in the sun by throwing balls to each other. The balls didn't ...
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Active School Thursday

Senior Infants having a very active PE lesson, first they ran relay races with several different ways of getting the ...
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First Class practicing their ball skills over Active School week

Over the week First class kept them selves active practicing a variety of ball skills both at school and in ...
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This is What Second Class did over Active School week

On Tuesday they practiced their football skills. Some passes A bit of fancy foot work Throwing and Catching And a ...
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Active School Week – Active Wednesday for our Junior Infants

Working or playing our Junior Infants are always active. Junior and Senior Infants doing star jumps while on their Active ...
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Active School Week – Throwing and Catching in Junior Infants

During PE this week the Junior Infants practiced throwing and catching Catch ! They threw balls Bean bags They threw ...
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Active School Week – First Class Learning how to Skip

While having fun during break time some of our first class students decided to learn how to skip ...
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