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St. George's National School, Balbriggan Co. Dublin

Playground Breaks

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

All pupils in St George's NS have twice daily playground breaks.

Our playgrounds are zoned so that class levels have their own areas.

We like to facilitate the use of PE equipment during break times.

Resources include: footballs, basketballs and skipping ropes. 

It is policy in St George's NS that on days when pupils are unable to play outdoors that each class completes an extended classroom-based physical activity break.

GoNoodle is a favourite on days we cannot go outside :)

 

Playground Leaders

St George's NS trains our 5th and 6th class pupils as playground leaders to run fun activities in our Junior & Senior Infant yard.

Each of our five 5th and 6th classes take turns in 5 week blocks to lead the playground activities. They use simple equipment from the PE storage cupboard, such as hula hoops, cones, beanbags and soft balls, to organise activities for the infants.

5th and 6th class really enjoying their new leadership roles and the Junior and Senior Infants loved keeping active and learning new skills.

Well done playground leaders!

Active Break Everyday Challenge

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Every class completed the Active Break Every Day challenge, as a whole school initiative, from November 13th to December 8th, 2023.

Every class committed to taking an Active Break every day over the four weeks. The benefits of this are improved concentration in class, improved fitness and improved long term health benefits.

We complete this challenge every year and it is always popular with our pupils!

Each class had a checklist on their door to keep track of the active breaks they were completing everyday. We liked keeping an eye on what all the classes were getting up to!

Classes used a variety of activity breaks including running breaks, dance breaks, exercise breaks and the Olympic Movement Breaks, which were led by Olympians and High-Performance athletes demonstrating fun exercises and activities that students of all abilities can do.

The Olympic Movement Breaks were very popular as we look forward to the Olympics in Paris 2024.

Well done St George's!

 

Olympic Movement Breaks

 

Decreasing Sedentary Time

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Standing desks (5/9)
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Standing desks (6/9)
Standing desks (6/9)
 
Wake up shake up! (7/9)
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Running laps (8/9)
Running laps (8/9)
 
Go Noodle! (9/9)
Go Noodle! (9/9)
 

During the 2020/2021 school year, every class agreed upon 3, or more, actions to decrease sedentary time.

Each class chose actions that suited them and posted a news item about being more active on their class page.

Some of the most popular actions included:

  • Running laps
  • Dance breaks 
  • Stretching in class
  • Movement breaks between lessons
  • GoNoodle
  • Exercise when an announcement is made

Why not click into Senior Infants, 2nd Class, 4th Class or 6th Class to see some examples of what our classes have come up with!

 

Active School Walkway

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We are delighted with our new Active School Walkway in St George's.

Our caretaker, Paul, helped us to secure the signs around the school grounds.

We had a fantastic map of the school made when Eileen, from the Irish Orienteering Association, came to our school to work with our 5th Class pupils.

This map helped us greatly when plotting out the walkway.

We are lucky to have plenty of outdoor space in St George's and plenty of varied and interesting areas.

Our wonderful Active Agents measured the length of our walkway - 650m in total.

We intend to use our walkway to 'do our talking as we're walking' for our Active Committee meetings in the future!

 

We launched our Active School Walkway on 26th March. Pupils really enjoyed following the route on the map and exploring our school grounds. Teachers chose to complete the mindfulness activity from the Walkway Ideas Booklet for their first activity on the walkway. We look forward to trying out all the other walkway activities too!

Run a Day Challenge

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Every class in St George's completed the Run a Day Challenge this year. 

We complete this challenge every year and we enjoy it so much that many classes continue running their laps even when the challenge is over!

Running laps is a great way to keep active during the school day.

Teachers display charts outside their classrooms to keep track of how many laps their class is running.

We love checking up on how the other classes are getting on!

We love taking part in our Run a K a Day Challenge every year :)

 

Active Sitting

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St George's NS were delighted to be chosen to take part in the Active Sitting pilot under the active flag initiative.

Three classes in the school are partaking in the project. We are very excited to be among the first schools to enrol in this exciting new scheme.

These balls will be offered to a group of children as an alternative to their chairs for a period of time in an effort to support their posture, fitness and core stability.

Each pod will have the opportunity to use the balls for a minimum of a week and can still use their chairs as an option.

The balls help to improve posture, strengthen core muscles and they increase concentration and alertness in class.

The reactions to the stability balls have been very positive so far and we look forward to sharing the end results with you all.

 

Walking to School - Green Flag

Not only are we an Active School but we are also a Green Flag School!

We encourage all who can to ditch the car or bus and get walking to school!

We have had some great 'Walk on Wednesday' mornings where teachers have donned their hi-vis vests to give out stickers and prizes to pupils who walk to school.

Physical Activity Rewards

Our Active Agents worked together to come up with some ideas that teachers could use as Active Rewards in the classroom.

Our Active Agent suggestions include:

Extra yard time on a Friday for best lines

GoNoodle/Just Dance reward breaks

Active School Homework Passes - we used to give homework passes as rewards but now we give active homework passes. The pupil gets the night off written homework and gets to do active work instead!

 

We Love to Incorporate Physical Activity into Annual Calendar Events

European School Sports Day 2023

 

Active Halloween at St George's NS

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Halloween Disco (5/18)
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Active Halloween Walk (7/18)
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Halloween Disco (8/18)
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Halloween Disco (9/18)
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Halloween Disco (10/18)
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Active Halloween Walk (11/18)
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Halloween Disco (12/18)
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Halloween Disco (13/18)
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Halloween Disco (14/18)
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Active Halloween Walk (15/18)
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Halloween Disco (17/18)
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Halloween Disco (18/18)
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Pupils at St George’s enjoyed an active day to mark the last day before mid-term break in October 2020.

Our senior classes showed us their scariest, socially distanced, moves to some of our favourite Halloween tunes.

Our junior classes took to the outdoors for their annual Halloween walk and had great fun keeping fit while running from vampires and ghosts.

Happy Halloween everyone!

 

St George's love to Céilí dance! - Seachtain na Gaeilge 2020

We look forward to working on the dance strand of the PE curriculum every year in St George's.

We teach the dance strand of PE during February and March - this gives us plenty of time every year to practice our Céilí dancing for Seachtain na Gaeilge!

We often pair up younger and older classes and teach each other a different Céilí dance. 

Watch our video of Ms Storey's 2nd class pupils teaching Ms Needham's 6th class pupils how to do the Siege of Ennis in March 2020.

 

Active Christmas at St George's NS

During the week before our Christmas holidays, classes at St George's used their timetabled hall slot for some socially distanced dancing to some of our favourite Christmas songs.

The Active Committee shared a list of Christmas themed guided dance videos suitable for all class levels.

Why not give it a go yourself!? We've linked one of our favourites!

We're sure you'll enjoy it just as much as we did :)

 

Santa Relay

During the 2019/2020 school year, some of our classes completed a Santa Relay in the run up to Christmas.

Run, Santa, run!

Marathon Kids

Well done to our sixth class students who completed the Marathon Kids programme in November 2019!

Students in sixth class completed daily laps, gradually building up their running ability before completing the final mile of their marathon in Morton Stadium in Santry. Over the course of the eight weeks, students ran 26.2 miles in total! Everyone received a tshirt and a medal for taking part. Even Mr Falvey and Ms Needham joined in!

Well done sixth class!

60 Minutes a Day Physical Activity Challenge

In the 2019/2020 school year 3rd – 6th Class at St George’s had a great time completing their 60 Minutes a Day Physical Activity Challenge as part of our Active School Flag initiative.

6th Class do the Haka

Mr Falvey's 6th Class performed a wonderful assembly explaining the Haka to us in November 2019. They really enjoyed learning the Haka Challenge. We were particularly interested in this after the Rugby World Cup.