This article is from page 62 of the 2011-05-17 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 62 JPG
YOGA, surfing and taekwon-do were all the menu for PE class at Inagh National School last week as the parents, staff and students of the school all took part in their first ever Active School’s Week.
The week, which saw children from the school taking part in a host of traditional and non-traditional sports and activities, is the latest step in the school’s bid to become of the first school’s in Clare to earn a Active School’s Flag.
Similar to the Green Flags handed out to school for environmental achievements – the Active Schools Flag aims to encourage staff and pupils to focus more on enjoying themselves through a range of diverse physical activities.
The week was co-ordinated at the school by teacher Síle O’Loughlin, who believes that it has already had a positive effect for all the students.
“We are a very strong hurling school here and the local club was very helpful in sending in coaches to the school but the week was about showing the children the benefits off all different types of sports. For a start the children either walked or cycled to school every day and we also had a large variety of different activities for them throughout the week,” she said.
“The children all kept a daily diary where they tracked how much exercise they were getting. The aim to make sure that every child got at least 60 minutes of solid exercise each day. It was about introducing different things to the children, like we had one boy on Monday who ab- solutely loved the yoga, he wouldn’t have had a chance to do that if wasn’t for Active School Week.
“Also some of the older boys who would play a lot of hurling found things like yoga much more challenging than they had expected. The Green Room Surf Club were also with us and they told us how a lot of sports club would come to them because surfing is good for building stamina and working muscles that they wouldn’t normally be working.”
The Active School Week is just one part of a series of events that Inagh National School are undertaking in order to win the Active School Flag. The school has a already undertaking a review of it’s Physical Education policy as well as looking at the open play areas and trying to make them as interesting as possible.