Chosen Strand to Focus on-Games

This year and last year a number of our staff members engaged with courses to help support the development of PE in our school with specifically keeping the strand of Games in mind. As a way of reminding staff of games that can be used during P.E. Lessons, the whole staff engaged in Continuing Professional Development in their school hall. It was led by a member of staff who is an associate with the P.E. branch of the P.D.S.T. The course covered a wide array of games, from games with or without equipment to the usual traditional games that can be used outside. Every staff member came away with a booklet of ideas that they used during their P.E. classes as an introduction and conclusion to their lessons focused on games. All teachers made a special emphasis on teaching games in PE lessons with the warm-up for most lessons consisting of small games to promote movement which they had from the staff training they had received.  As a way of introducing our students to games and sports they may never have tried, we made a conscious effort to introduce taster sessions of games such as Tag Rugby, Basketball, Sports Hall games to our Active Week program of events as these were games that students had reported they rarely played. Please see Active Week section for pictures and report on Active Week.

The games programme should provide opportunities for children to develop skills and understanding through enjoyable individual, small group and team activities. Playground games help the child to move effectively and to interact with others. These are included in the strand unit ‘creating and playing games’.

We have found the Move Well, Move Often program alongside the PSSI website to be a fantastic resource for our school. It has made the teaching of PE in our school more structured and focused on the needs of the children.  All P.E. PSSI Lessons were made readily available to teachers in folders and also on the staff google drive. The Move Well Move Often books were also kept in a base class and shared among staff members at that level.

We have found that for years we have been focused on teaching the skills of specific games/sports but it is important for us to focus on the basic skills the children need to master first like catching, running, jumping, balancing etc for them to be able to play many different types of sports.

Our Active School committee decided that as a school we would focus on the Move Well, Move Often program and focus on specific skills connected to the games strand.  

In 2019/2020, our 5th Class qualified from their Playground Leadership course. Our year was cut short due to Covid19. During this time, we had playground leaders in charge of teaching games old and new to our younger classes after being taught these games by their teacher. We also had games stations set up on the yard using equipment to allow the children free time to play and utilise what they have learned about games to the max. As the games strand focuses on enabling children to create and play games, we feel we have worked very hard on making this happen within our school.  Children combined what they had learned during PE and put it in to great use on the yard.

Outside agencies such as Longford G.A.A Coaches and basketball coaches from Longford Falcons have all been allowed into the school to work with certain classes. Here again we focused on the skills of catching, kicking, coordination before moving into a game situation. Every class in the school was timetabled to receive coaching over a period of 6 weeks. This was a huge success.

Our club-school link coach Jimmy Mc Cormack has been part of our set up for many years and he was also on hand to help assist teachers in structuring P.E. Lessons based on the games strand.

At different stages of the year, we made use of staff personnel , namely Mr. Daniel Mimnagh,  Mr. Emmet Toher, Mr. Gerry Rowley, Ms. Marie Brady and Ms. Grainne Rooney to assist class teachers in delivering P.E. Lessons with the main focus of Games and before games working on the Fundamental Skills.

P.E. Journals have also been used in 5th and 6th class for children to write comments, complete Assessment templates on the skills we have focused on during each of the stands but especially Games. E.g. Catching Peer Assessment and Self Assessment templates. 

Active School Flag progress has been discussed at every staff meeting during the year, so that all staff are kept abreast of developments. Upcoming events such as Active Week, Coaches visits, European Week of Sport, Run Around Ireland Challenge and Fun Runs were all communicated to staff directly. PE lessons were discussed regularly with staff sharing ideas for games development as this is our chosen area to work on this year. The PSSI Lesson Plans were a significant help in this regard.  

We have seen a huge improvement in the children’s basic skills of running, jumping, catching, etc and it is wonderful to hear them use the language of FMS skills and the PE curriculum.