Castleisland, Co. Kerry.

Phone: 066-7141147
Email: info@muiregansmal.ie

Active Schools

What is Active Schools?

Muire Gan Smál are striving to achieve a physically educated and physically active school community. With help from our teachers, students, parents and wider community we hope that in 2018/2019 our school will be recognised as an official ‘Active School’. As always, when the school community puts our collective minds to something we can achieve big things. This will be no different. So with everyone’s help, ideas and support, we expect to be flying the Active School Flag with pride at the end of this school year.

This is our wonderful Active School Committee here in Muire Gan Smál who are offereing their expertise.

The girls have conducted surveys in the school to ensure that their schoolmates are as active as they can be after-school in clubs and extra-curricular activities.

They are also our Playground Leaders at Sos and Lunch and lead the younger classes in fun, structured and enjoyable games which is briliant. Thank you girls!

Our active school slogan this year is 'Be Happy, Be Healthy, Be Active'.

Be Active!

To become an Active School, we will need to focus on 5 key areas.

  1. Energise the school day and the school year: we will be including ideas such as DEAR and DEAD (Drop Everything And Run / Drop Everything And Dance), an Active School Week built around our traditional sports day, rainy day lunch activities and plenty of extra-curricular physical activities after-school to boost the energy levels of our students.
  2. Create active and happy lunch-breaks: Our active school coordinators have been Playworks and are currently training the active school committee. Soon the children from the active school committee will be leading the younger children in structured activities on the yard. They will also be encouraging the pupils to partake in busy/active líne at the end of break-times.
  3. Partnership: We want to introduce children to as many different activities as possible. We invite the local community, sports clubs, physical activity facilitators to visit our school to give ‘taster’ training sessions to our students.
  4. Inclusion: At all times we must ensure that all children can participate in these activities. Being a mainstream school with special classes, we must always ensure that the activities are appealing to all children including those with sensory/gross-motor difficulties. We seek guidance from organisations to provide the best possible variety of activities to all children in Muire Gan Smál. Lastly we will aim to show the children that adults enjoy physical activity also by organising whole school activities involving teachers, parents and students.
  5. Be Active, Be Healthy, Be Happy! We want this project to be a positive and fun experience for all.

What we are doing.

  • Partnerships

     

    Partnerships are very important to running a successful active school.

    In Muire Gan Smál we are very lucky to have forged partnerships with many people in the local community.

    The Munster Council offer Camogie lessons with the pupils, Kerry County Board provide football skills with all pupils in the school. We partner with our neighbouring school, Castleisland BNS to partake in the Badminton Primary School Finals. We are engaged in the Super Trooper Programme and have participated in the Food Dudes initiative. We are also delighted to have an ongoing partnership with the Institute of Technology in Tralee and their student teachers.

  • Physical Activity

     

    We encourage physical activity throughout the school day. Each class has two outdoor breaks in the playground every day. Our wonderful playground leaders offer activities in different zones in our yard, including areas for ball games.

    Pupils are always encouraged to keep moving throughout the break – thus the concept of 'Do your talking while you're walking' is the new craze!!

  • P.E

     

    Here at Muire Gan Smál, each class has at least one hour of P.E. every week. 

    As a school, we follow the six strands of the P.E. curriculum and throughout the year we take part in games, athletics, gymnastics, dance, outdoor and andventure activities and aquatics. 

    We think P.E. is a very important subject and we follow a school P.E. policy and timetable for teaching the various strands.  

    These are the 6 Strands:

    Games
    Athletics
    Gymnastics
    Dance
    Acquatics
    Outdoor & Adventure activities

    As a school this year we have decided to prioritise the strand of Outdoor and Adventure and we are working hard with the P.E teachers in school, and our visiting teachers from the local Institiute of Technology as mentioned above in our Partnerships section.

  • Active Schools Week

     

    Watch this space for all the information on our upcoming Active Schools Week 2019.

    Right now we are working very hard on organising a specatcular week of activitiy and fun for all the pupils in the school! 

    We can't wait!!

Our Daily Mile Challenge:

The Daily Mile is a social activity where children walk, run or jog, at their own pace, for 15 minutes every day during school hours with their classmates. Everyone has fun taking part – it is not P.E. nor is it competitive – while building relationships, confidence and resilience. 

If your child is doing The Daily Mile at school you can support this at home, by both encouraging their confidence in running and moving outside with them, out of school hours. Parents often say that The Daily Mile helps children to eat and sleep better and that often they become young ambassadors for whole family fitness!

Castleisland,
Co. Kerry.
Phone: 066-7141147
Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

School Roll:14952L

DESIGN: OnTarget Web Design

Site Admin