I manage the P.E delivery of 8 Schools, in which we monitor our impact as a subject as much as possible.
In three or four of these Schools it became apparent that children’s cardio-vascular fitness wasn’t improving at the same rate as previous years, which led to some reflection on how to address the situation.
Our Schools conduct fitness tests annually. (You can read my justification for doing so on a previous blog through the link below. I also share other ways in which we try maximise the impact of the P.E & Sport Premium)
Primary P.E & Sport Premium – How to evidence & maximise impact!
One way we are attempting to improve fitness levels in our Schools this year is by introducing some fun ‘Fitness Focused’ Inter-house competitions. These competitions will be introduced and explained to the children at the start of each term. The components of the activities will then be set up by Playground leaders at lunchtime and the children will be able to ‘train’ for the event over the course of the term!
We hope having an additional inter-house with a fun, active twist will inspire some of the lesser active children to get involved and start training for the big (silly) event!
Below I’ve described how these activities will work in case you fancy a go yourself! I’ve used the slides from the assemblies I’ll be leading to help me…
Autumn = The Terrible Treasure Time Trial!
So for Autumn’s challenge (The Terrible Treasure Time Trial) each House will take turns to complete the challenge in the School Hall in mid-November before the stage gets set up for the Christmas plays.
Although on the picture you can only see 3 benches, there will actually be as many as we safely squeeze into the Hall. Just to cut down on waiting time and inactivity levels.
The premise is really simple, all the kids are Pirates, Pirates love treasure. For Treasure we’ll use bean bags, cones, dot markers etc
Children will take turns in walking the ‘plank’ (bench) whilst dodging soft balls thrown by Staff members. They then perform a different exercise on each one of the coloured cones. Once they have done all of this they are allowed to pick up one piece of treasure and take it back to the ship, tagging the next member of their house.
All of this will be timed until all of the treasure is back in the ship!
I will be telling the children about the challenge this week, then the lunchtime supervisors and playground leaders will be setting areas for the children to practice the Jumping Jacks, Plank & the Space Rockets (like a ‘burpee’ without the leg extension on the floor)
The Superhero Slalom
This is the activity we will run through Spring, the kids and staff will be allowed to dress up as Superheroes on the day of the competition!
This competition will be similar to a time trial, but the children will be attempting to save an endangered fish! They’ll have to fill up a large water container until the water level is at a marked line.
For this activity the children start by running 5 shuttles from cone to cone, they then enter Shark infested waters (dun dun dunnnnnnn). To avoid certain peril they must jump onto the flat markers, floor is lava style, these markers will be differentiated so children can pick a point to cross that seems achievable. They then have to fill a plastic cup full of water, slalom in and out of the cones & pour the water into the container to save Freya the Fish!
When the water level is high enough and Freya is safe, the timer stops!
The kids will be told how the activity works when we get back in January and they will be able to practice the shuttles, the jumps and the slalom at lunchtime.
Enjoy!