Physical Education

PAWS

Gymnastics

Outdoor and Adventure

Dance

Games

At St George’s NS we seek to assist the children in our school in achieving their potential by the promotion of physical activity throughout the school. We intend to reinforce the seven key messages of the Primary PE curriculum in our lessons.

Key Messages of the Primary PE Curriculum

The importance of enjoyment and play.
Maximum participation by all children.
The development of skills and understanding.
A balance between competitive and non-competitive activities.
Providing opportunities for achievement of each child.
Providing activities equally suitable for boys and girls.

All pupils in our school are provided with 60 minutes timetabled PE per week, as a minimum.

All classes are taught 5 different PE strands each year: Athletics, Dance, Gymnastics, Games, and Outdoor and Adventure.

All Classes are taught the PAWS Water Safety Programme in June each year.

Every child’s progress is discussed with parents at Parent-Teacher meetings and feedback is included in the annual school report.

Our school PE programme allocates a balanced amount of teaching time to each of the different PE strands.

St George's NS ensures that PE activities are planned so that they are accessible by all pupils.

Teachers use the PSSI lesson plans and the 'Move Well, Move Often' resources to guide their delivery of the PE Curriculum.

Priority PE Strand & CPD

As part of our Active School Flag we are focusing on strengthening the delivery of the Athletics strand in PE.

This year at St George's we decided to work together as a staff to strengthen our delivery of the athletics strand in PE.

The wonderful Ciaran from Athletics Ireland came to the school to share his experience and expertise in coaching athletics and to deliver CPD to the teaching staff. Ciaran actually helped to write the athletics PSSI lesson plans!

Staff enjoyed the hands-on learning and came away with lots of new and fun ideas to help us to teach the athletics strand in PE.

CPD in PE

Staff at St George's got the year off to a great start by participating in a professional development workshop with SARI- Sport’s Against Discrimination Ireland! We all really enjoyed this workshop- especially the games and it made for a very memorable day! We all learned a lot from Kerrie and the coaches and look forward to putting our learning into practice!

The SARI workshop combined elements of two our flags at St George's - the Yellow Flag and the Active Flag!

We learned about different types of discrimination and how they can impact other people. We also played lots of brilliant games that really helped us to learn about the power of discrimination and reflect upon our own behaviour, actions and words!

PAWS - Water Safety

At St George's NS, we teach the PAWS Water Safety Programme to all class levels each year during the month of June.

We are very lucky in Balbriggan to be near the sea. This also means it is extra important for us to understand the importance of water safety.

PAWS (Primary Aquatics Water Safety) outlines life-saving guidelines for children of every age and is available digitally to every school in the country. It teaches children how to be safe around water in homes, farms, pools, beaches and on our waterways.

For more information visit https://watersafety.ie/primary-school/

PE Equipment

Fundamental Movement Skills

With the help of the Active Committee, we decided that the 4 Fundamental Movement Skills (FMS) that we would focus on are:

Further information about Fundamental Movement Skills and the Move Well Move Often resources used can be found at https://www.scoilnet.ie/pdst/physlit/fms-activities/

PE Homework

It is policy at St George's NS to assign Active Homework once a week in all classes.

Active Homework can take many shapes and forms. Pupils may be given specific task to complete by their teacher or they may be given a bank of activities from which to choose their Active Homework each week.

Click the Active Homework Ideas link below to access a whole range of fun ideas and activities!

In response to our Pupil and Parent questionnaires, each class has assigned two PE Homework Monitors to remind teachers and pupils about their PE homework each week.