Active School Flag

Holy family school for the Deaf is working towards achieving the active flag this year in the primary section. The active flag encourages schools to get active more often and promotes physical education. It promotes working on a whole school level to reflect on current practices in the school and how they can be improved, as well as linking with the community and parents/guardians.

Physical Education

Curriculum

Holy Family School for the Deaf plans PE lessons using the physical education curriculum. There are 6 strands in the P.E. curriculum which we teach throughout the year:

· Athletics

· Dance

· Games

· Gymnastics

· Outdoor and Adventure

· Aquatics

This year we have been unable to participate in swimming lessons as per previous years due to COVID, however, we are teaching aquatics and water safety through the land PAWS program with selected classes.

Calendar

We have created a calendar for the year to focus on particular fundamental movement skills(FMS). We use the “Move well move often”

Physical activity

Active flag committee

We have established an active flag committee here in the primary. There are 8 members, one representative from each class who meet regularly to provide ideas for our school to achieve the active flag.

These members are recognised by their blue bibs in the yard. They are responsible for ensuring everyone is getting active and has a friend to play with. The senior committee members support the younger classes on Fridays at break time and join them for playground games. The junior members get the opportunity to work with the senior classes at their break time on Mondays as active flag monitors. Everyone is active and having fun!

Tyrone and Kildare classes participated in tennis lessons in Charleville lawn tennis club , Phibsborough. They really enjoyed learning new skills on the courts. Our thanks to Tennis Ireland for providing funding under the Love Tennis Program.

**PHOTO OF TENNIS***

HFSD Active School Flag Slogan

We ran a competition for each class to come up with the best active flag slogan for our school. We had to vote and the winner is…… “Let’s get moving and grooving!”

Partnerships

we launched our partnership with Deaf sports Ireland (DSI) and Football Association Ireland (FAI). We welcomed Paddy O’Reilly (head of FAI Football for all program) & Heather Jamerson (Coach), Derek Maguire (DSI President), Laura Clarke & Joey Watson (DSI Ambassadors) and Ben O’Looney (Sports Development) to our school and began our six week coaching sessions of futsal with the pupils. Participating classes include: Kerry, Mayo, Tipperary, Kilkenny, and Galway.

As part of this partnership, we want to place emphasis on getting active, girls in sport, and Deaf role models. The children really enjoyed welcoming our guests, they complied a short video to show everyone how we get active in HFSD, and then the children performed a short dance. We had a large welcome sign to greet everyone as they entered the play hall.

Joey Watson gave a lovely speech explaining to the children what they will be learning about and introduced our coaches. Ben presented the children with their own jerseys which were embroidered with the DSI logo. The children were delighted and wore their jerseys for their training session.


We are delighted to have Heather and Laura train with our children, to motivate and encourage them and in particular show girls that sport is enjoyable and a lifelong skill. Heather and Laura are great role models for our pupils.

Futsal will run from March 1st to April 5th inclusive. The children thoroughly enjoyed their first training session and are eager to develop their futsal skills over the coming weeks. The senior classes Tyrone and Kildare will be participating in tag Rugby in May which we are looking forward to.

Primary Children with a banner they created welcoming DSI (Deaf Sports Ireland) and FAI (Football Association of Ireland)

Skipping Club

The Tyrone class has set up a skipping club with their teacher Orla. They are currently working towards skipping 60times in a row! They will show the junior classes how to skip in the coming weeks.

Active School Flag Homework

This month each class is competing to see who can get the most activities done at home before the midterm break. We have some very competitive classes and families!

Check out our cute little students from Early Intervention participating in Active School Flag

https://youtube.com/shorts/Y2Z5V-PzmRI?feature=share

ACTIVE WEEK SPORTS DAY

Our sports day was a huge success, we had a variety of wet and dry stations. The dry sport stations consisted of: exercise Bootcamp, basketball, futsal, running, egg and spoon race, throwing, obstacle course and sack race. One student was assigned the responsibility of explaining the station to each class group. We had wet station which consisted of water balloon throwing, water balloon caching, parachute games, and waterfall cups.

Every student in the school was given the colour yellow, red or blue. For sports day they had to wear this colour and work with their team to gain points.

Children gained points by; supporting their peers, cheering, helping others and trying their best at the various stations.

For our teacher versus student challenge, we had a game of tug of war.

The students were the stronger team, and had the pleasure of pieing the staff members on the losing team!

As a school we decided to focus more on dance and how to enhance this strand for our Deaf pupils. Our main aim was to give children confidence in movement in front of others and to feel free to express themselves. As a surprise for active school week, the staff created a short dance for the children to copy on the clever touch screen. The staff dressed up as students and the children really enjoyed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yn7Xr3DTyMQ link to our sports day

Active School Portfolio


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