Author: Sarah Price

Can co-creation encourage more children to be more active?

Post author By Sarah Price
Post date October 21, 2021

Co-creation can be seen as the latest buzzword in education but what does it mean and could it help engage more children in their PE, School Sport and Physical Activity? This is what we are seeking to find out through our new Go Well HEART project.

Co-creation is different from consultation, which is where you ask questions, your class or working group responds and you decide the final outcome. Co-creation is working in partnership – you discuss ideas and proposals with your class or working group (co creators) and agree what you want to achieve. You develop the idea together and you decide on the goals and actions together. Everyone contributes; value is created collectively and everyone involved benefits.

Whilst co-creation can involve more work and take more time, it can ultimately lead to greater engagement and ownership and ultimately create programmes or activities that are more fun and enjoyable. It changes the dynamics of a programme or activity, moving pupils from being passive recipients to becoming active participants. Pupils can also feel empowered and listened to.

These outcomes sound great, but where do you start?

To be successful in co-creation you need to be clear on the type of engagement and how the final decision will be made – a collective, a majority, or will it be down to you or a chosen pupil to make the final decisions? An example of the scale of involvement in the decision-making process could be:

I will ask and listen; your opinions are important, however I will make the final decision (Consultation).
I will discuss and build it with you, and you will have an equal say in the decisions. We will vote on the outcome.
We will discuss and build this together and we as a group will decide on how decisions are made..

What are the benefits of co-creation?

By introducing co-creation you are giving children the chance to start articulating thoughts, wants and needs, whilst also building empathy and understanding through collective decision making.

Co-creation encourages pupils to think outside of the box and apply what they have learned through other experiences. It helps them to understand goals and what they need to do to work towards these. It can also present solutions that we as adults may not have thought of.

How can co-creation help with PESSPA?

Developing an active lifestyle is vital for our mental and emotional health as well as our physical wellbeing, but for some children PESSPA can be a miserable experience, a time when they feel embarrassed and uncomfortable. Co-creation could be one way to address this. Giving children choice and involving them in project design and the decision-making process could lead to greater engagement and enjoyment.

It also reduces the level of ‘risk’ when introducing a new programme or activity. “If you build it, they will come?” If you build it with them, they are already there.

You can even co-create the co-creation process with the children! Discuss with your pupils how they would like to be involved and engaged. Some pupils may not want to be part of the process initially or may shy away from group discussion. Give more hesitant or reluctant pupils the chance to give their thoughts in an alternative way or let them observe discussion-based activities; they will see how it works and it may well encourage them to be involved in future sessions.

Tools to use as part of the co-creation process:

Surveys
Focus groups
Activities that help children to formulate a contribution (Diamond 9)
Reflections (experiment and learn)
Debates
Generating data and discussing it

Our top tips for successful co-creation:

Start small – pick one part of PESSPA to co-create e.g. after school provision. See what works well with your children and spread this to other areas of PESSPA.
Test and learn – part of the co-creation process is to do, review and evaluate. In a rapidly changing world we need to help children not to fear failure,but to be prepared to try, learn and adapt or improve.
Be mindful – ‘they don’t know what they don’t know’. How can you help your pupils find out more to make informed decisions and contributions? How could you spark their imagination? Try using stories, videos or taster sessions/experiences. Remember that you don’t know what you don’t know either!

What to avoid:

Tokenism – asking children for the sake of asking, to look good, to look on trend and not using the data effectively or ignoring it if it doesn’t fit your narrative or plan
Entering co-creation with the outcome pre-formed in your mind
Not being clear on how decisions will be made
Making promises you can’t keep

How we are using co-creation at Go Well

We want to ensure that our programmes build on the activities that children enjoy. We believe introducing co-creation into our programmes will help ensure that being active is a positive experience for more young people. Earlier this term we launched the second phase of our HEART project. Over 2,000 children are helping us to test a series of activities over a 12-week period.

The ’mini-researchers’ are spending six weeks working through exercises set by our team and noting their thoughts and feelings about the activities. They then submit their own suggestions for the second half of the programme. These can be variations of existing activities or brand-new exercises. The second 6-week booklet of activities includes the children’s own games. This feedback and their contributions will help us to develop our understanding of the activities that they enjoy and stick with, and how these can be built into our physical activity programmes. We are also testing a co-creation approach and will reflect and learn ourselves on this process.

Further information on co-creation

James Hutton Institute – Is co-creation more than participation?

Integration and Implementation Insights – 8 strategies for co-creation

Go Well Blog

Six Dimensions of Wellness – pt 1 Physical Wellness

Post author By Sarah Price
Post date October 7, 2021
Sticky post

We believe passionately in the power of physical activity to improve lives. Over this term we will be looking at how we can develop healthy minds and bodies through the six dimensions of wellness.

Firstly, what is wellness and why is it important?
Wellbeing? Physical health? Happiness? What does ‘wellness’ mean?
Often misunderstood and confused with similar terms, wellness is actually an active process that incorporates physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing. It is the state of being healthy in body and mind by practicing healthy habits on a daily basis.

What are the six dimensions of wellness?

Six areas of our lifestyle make up overall wellness – physical, social, intellectual, spiritual, emotional and occupational. These complement each other to provide a well-balanced, vital and prosperous life. By making simple healthy choices each day, we will move further towards achieving wellness.

We want to help you develop your own wellness and that of your pupils. In this first blog in the series, we’re exploring physical wellness.

Physical wellness

Physical wellness is an important contributor to our overall wellness. This means eating well, sleeping well and exercising regularly. Feeling physically good also enhances self-esteem, aids self-control and provides a sense of direction.

How can you support your own physical wellness and that of your pupils?
At Go Well, we want to impact on the wellness of 1 million people by 2025. One of the ways we are doing this is by introducing children to a broad range of healthy activities. Encouraging children to develop healthy habits whilst they are young will improve the quality of their life as they grow.

Here are three ways that will help you to achieve optimal physical wellness:

Eating healthily – a healthy diet where you eat a range of healthy foods, particularly fruit and vegetables, is beneficial for short and long-term health. It will also help keep you full and satisfied throughout the day. Change for Life has some great tips on nutrition and what a healthy diet looks like, as well as meal ideas and food swaps. You can also download a free food scanner app which makes it easier to find out what is really in the food and drink that you’re buying.

Exercising regularly and consistently – being active every day helps to strengthen your body and mind. Children aged 5 – 18 should aim for at least 60 minutes of moderate intensity physical activity a day (this means you should be breathing faster and feeling warmer). Children should take part in a range of activities across the week to develop movement skills, muscles and bones. Spreading active periods out across the day will also help to reduce the length of time spent sitting or lying down and break up long periods of not moving. You can get more information about activity guidelines different kinds of activities on the NHS website

Getting adequate rest – sleep is critical to good health and helps us to feel better physically and mentally. Not enough sleep can lead to difficulties in concentrating and a higher likelihood of getting ill. Children aged 6 – 12 years need 9 to 12 hours sleep every night. Quality sleep is essential for children’s growth and development, it will help them to do better at school, they will be able to react more quickly to situations, learn more effectively and solve problems more easily. The Sleep Charity has resources to help support children to get a good night’s sleep.

Find out more

You can find out more about the Six Dimensions of Wellness from the National Wellness Institute

Read our introductory blog

Go Well Blog

6 ways to inspire more girls to play sport

Post author By Sarah Price
Post date September 16, 2021

We have been wowed by some amazing young athletes recently – Sky Brown, Emma Raducanu, Maisie Summers Newton – but they sadly can be seen as the exception. Just 15% of girls meet WHO recommendations of at least 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous intensity physical activity per day. Amongst 5 – 7 year olds, only 23% achieve this target.

The Department for Education is investing £1.2m to improve school sport for girls but we can all do more to encouraging young girls to develop an active lifestyle. As a PE lead you can play a pivotal role in inspiring girls to take part in sport. Here are six ways you can help:

Talk about females in sport

We all need someone to look up to. Just 30% of girls dream of reaching the top of sport compared with 60% of boys. Highlight women role models, these can be on the national and international stage or heroes closer to home – celebrate the successes and stories of active women and girls in your school and community. For example, if you are chatting about the weekend’s football results with your class, remember to talk about the results from the Women’s Super League.

Create safe spaces for girls to play sport at your school

Levelling up starts on the playing field. Look at how your pupils use your active spaces. Are the boys dominating the MUGA? Many girls feel uncomfortable about taking part in sports and activities under the gaze of boys. Can you create opportunities for girls-only activities, a space that they can use for their games or a fair share of the MUGA?

For every boys team, have a girls team

Football, cricket, rugby. It can be argued that mixed teams provide an opportunity for girls too, however, only the most confident and competent of girls are likely to take part with the boys. A girls’ only team will provide a safer space for girls to experiment with participating in sporting activities.

Challenge negative stereotypes

‘Throw like a girl’ ‘Run like a girl’ ‘This is a boys sport’ Make sure you, and all other staff within your school, address every negative stereotype heard. Constant reminding and reinforcing the message will help build confidence and belief amongst girls.

Encourage your female staff to become role models

Supporting girls to be active isn’t solely down to you. As we said at the beginning, we all play a part in creating a culture where activity is seen as integral to school life. This will help girls want to become more active. Make sure your female staff talk about and share stories of the sports and activities that they do. The more girls see other females playing sports or being active, the more it is normalised and seen as something that ‘we all do’.

Ask girls what sports and activities they are interested in

When pupils feel they have been involved in a decision and their opinions have been heard, their motivation increases. Research shows that girls response more positively to PE and school sport if they feel they have been part of the consultation process.

For more ideas and examples on how to create better experiences for girls in sport take a look at
Women in Sport’s Changing the Game for Girls Teacher Toolkit
Nike’s Made to Play Guide
Girls Football in School from Youth Sport Trust and the FA

Go Well Blog

How can I look after my own wellbeing?

Post author By Sarah Price
Post date June 27, 2021

Planning lessons, delivering them effectively, differentiating learning, supporting children to succeed…teachers are on the frontline and never more so than over the past 16 months. Many will be feeling drained from this exceptionally testing academic year.

To be ‘fit’ to cope with the constant demands and pressures, to provide the quality teaching and learning experiences that you wish to, and to be the great teacher you aspire to be, it is essential that you take steps to consider and look after your own wellbeing.

Here are five simple ways to improve your wellbeing and make sure you are fit for your lessons:

Stay hydrated; drink plenty of water. It sounds really simple but not only is it a healthy habit, drinking water can help to alleviate the effects of cortisol (the stress hormone). The NHS suggest you drink 6-8 glasses each day. Consider increasing your intake on warm summer days!
Prioritise good quality sleep. A good night’s sleep gives your brain time to repair, restore and re-energise. A calming routine before bed would help with this – reducing the effects of blue light by switching off all technology an hour before bedtime (try reading a book instead) and keeping your mobile phone out of your bedroom!
Exercise. Being active helps to release helpful chemicals in your brain that boost your mood and improve attention and concentration. Aim to have small active bursts in your day to keep your brain topped up. Also, create an exercise schedule for yourself for longer exercise sessions (walk, run, the gym, sporting activities – whatever you prefer) and prioritse that time for you!
Get outside. Spending time in nature has been proven to benefit both mental and physical wellbeing – reducing blood pressure, lowering heart rate, reducing muscle tension and minimising the production of stress hormones. To maximise the benefits, really take in your surroundings – take note of three things in the environment around you that make you feel good.
Write it down. Building a habit of journaling (writing down your thoughts each evening) can help clarify your thoughts and feelings, and solve problems. It can improve sleep and increase productivity. It can also help you meet your goals and improve your quality of life while reducing stress and symptoms of depression. Get a notepad and get writing!

If you find some of your new habits have a positive impact on your wellbeing, consider sharing them with your pupils or even doing them together. Being a good role model will help to inspire your pupils to be healthy and active and prioritise self-care.

Team Up is our innovative wellbeing programme. We have packages for children and for staff.

Remembering your ‘why’ – reconnecting with you and looking to the future – our blog by Hannah Bell to support school staff who might be struggling with the pressures of the pandemic.

Tags healthy habits, teacher, wellbeing

Go Well Blog

12 ideas for a memorable sports day this year!

Post author By Sarah Price
Post date May 19, 2021

Sports days can bring about so many different positive outcomes for children and the wider school community. As well as being a celebration of sporting achievements and talent within a school, these events are a brilliant opportunity for children to connect, socialise, have fun together and celebrate the benefits of being active.

The day can give pupils who may struggle in other areas of school life the chance to show off their talents, or inspire a child to be more active by having a positive experience of personal challenge. Children can also develop and show leadership, teamwork and communication skills.

As there are so many potential outcomes, a first step would be to decide on the objectives for your sports day, then design your event to deliver those outcomes. For example, if you want to deliver a celebration of physical activity and personal achievement, what events could you include? How would you include personal challenge? How would you celebrate individual success? If your outcome is to unite your school community, how would you involve different people and groups from your community? How could they interact within the current restrictions?

Here are 12 ideas that you could use depending on the aims and objective of your sports day:

Involve children in planning the day. Can they choose the theme? I’m sure they will have some great ideas about what they would like to do, how they can include everyone and what activities to include.
Split classes into teams or houses and give them the goal of collecting points for their team.
In the build-up to the day, have each team create a song, dance or cheer that they perform during the days before sports day and on the day itself.
Have team captains, perhaps in each class, record video good luck messages that can be shown in other classes before the day.
Link the activities to the 5 ways to well-being – Twinkl has some free resources that you could use
Take inspiration from the forthcoming Olympic and Paralympic Games and link your activities to the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics and their values. Take a look at Get Set, the British Olympic Association and British Paralympic Association youth engagement programme, for ideas
Have one class/bubble spectate whilst another class takes part in the activities, they can provide encouragement from the sidelines, perhaps singing their team’s song.
Involve parents by setting a challenge such as number of steps for that day or week. These achievements can contribute to house/team scores. Or ask parents to send in recorded video messages of support to use at the start or in the build-up to the day. Make sure you make parents aware of your theme/intended outcome so their messages can fit with this.
Hold a virtual opening ceremony – you could ask a sportsperson to record an opening message and share this across all classes.
Why stop at a day? Make it a ‘sports week’ or build-up to the day over a period of weeks. Give children the opportunity to practice the activities that will be taking place. Active lessons and linking the curriculum to the theme for the week will provide more opportunities for children to shine.
Set a challenge for teachers too. This could be something they complete before the event or a challenge for the day itself.
Celebrate successes in different ways – winner of the event? Achieving a personal best? Best leader? Biggest smile? WOW moment? Best team chant? etc. Have a positive scoring system and ensure all your helpers practice positive coaching.

We hope you find these ideas helpful and wish you the best of luck with your sports day. These events can live long in the minds of children, incorporating some of these ideas will help to ensure this is a positive memory for as many pupils as possible.

Here are some additional resources that may also help:

Youth Sport Trust – Youth Voice Toolkit

England Athletics’ Funetics Sports Day programme

School Games Positive Experiences of Competition Toolkit

Youth Sport Trust National School Sport Week – don’t forget to enter the prize draw when you register!

Tags school sports, sports day, sports day ideas

Go Well Blog

6 Top Tips on helping children return to exercise after a long break

Post author By Sarah Price
Post date March 2, 2021

Coinciding with winter, the recent lockdown is likely to have had a significant impact on your pupils’ activity and fitness levels. Children have missed out on school PE lessons, after-school activities, active travel, organised sport and outdoor play. On-line lessons have also increased screen use and sedentary behaviour.

Young people should undertake 60 minutes of moderate intensity activity over the course of a day. In this blog we explore how you can support your class as they return to school and help them to develop an active and healthy lifestyle.

Start where children are now, not where they were. Be compassionate and build things up steadily. Many of your pupils may not be able to do some activities or movements which they found easy before Christmas. Introducing a programme of daily activities will help to increase stamina, flexibility and strength gradually. Regular routines also have a positive impact on a child’s social and emotional development, which is particularly important at this time.
Build your pupils’ confidence and competence to move. Focus on good technique and differentiate to easier movements if required. To help children get moving again, activities need to be easy to understand and fun – keep things simple. Think about how you can extend an activity or movement to help those who are ready for development whilst enabling everyone in the class to feel a sense of achievement.
Focus on effort and reaching moderate to vigorous intensity levels – the number of individual movements completed is irrelevant. Aim for a moderate level of activity initially and build to vigorous over time. Use the Rate of Perceived exertion chart to see where children are now and aim to get them to work at a higher intensity each week.
Let them choose. With lockdown restrictions, many children feel a sense of powerlessness. Letting your class choose which activity or game to use is a great way for them to feel involved and listened to and in turn, this will help to build up their confidence. You can encourage the class to choose an activity that everyone takes part in, or pair pupils up and ask each pair to choose which activity they are going to do. Giving students a voice will also develop ownership of the activity and lead to greater participation and commitment.
Avoid comparison with others, especially in the early days. Individual workouts can be a great way to start your physical activity programme and ensure it is a personal challenge. When working together, think about grouping pupils by ability or fitness levels to avoid children feeling self-conscious. Create a culture where everyone’s achievements are celebrated by focusing on progress made. This will help bring your class closer together and develop respect for each other.
The best approach to encouraging children to be more active is little and often. Increasing the amount of time spent being physically active across all subjects will help to increase how often children are active during the day, it will also improve educational outcomes and emotional development.

Our Fit for Life programme can help you achieve all this, and more. Fit for Life has been specially designed to help you deliver high quality fitness workouts for your pupils. The 10-minute blast sessions use high intensity activities to support muscle and bone strengthening and can be done anytime, anywhere.

Take advantage of our special offer and get more for you and your school – all schools signing up for a
three-year licence will receive a FREE set of activity equipment worth £349.95.

5 top tips for integrating physical activity into a home learning day

Post author By Sarah Price
Post date January 14, 2021

The Chief Medical Officers’ recommendation is that children should take part in an average of 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity each day. In normal circumstances a lot of this may be provided by opportunities within a normal school day, for example walking to and from school, playtimes, PE lessons and after school clubs. With children at home and parents supporting their learning, how can physical activity be integrated into the new ‘school day’?

Here are a few tips:

1. Start the day with some activity

Get the day off to a good start with some physical activity! Perhaps make it part of your morning routine. Being active releases lovely feel good chemicals that boost mood and can help to start your day in a positive mindset. Activities you could do include:

A workout – you could try our FFL Workout of the Week
A dance – to your favourite music or using a resource like Just Dance
A ‘follow me’ style video like Joe Wicks or Jumpstart Jonny

Our advice is to keep things varied and vibrant so perhaps do a different activity each morning. Why not join in with your children and boost your brain chemicals too?

2. Plan an outside physical activity into your day

Getting outside in the sunlight is so important for general well-being. Outdoor play would be normal at lunchtime within the school day. Perhaps plan an activity in to the middle of the day to break the day up a bit, have a change of scene and recharge your batteries. Activities you could do include:

Going out for a walk
Going for a jog/run
Going on a bike ride/scooter Ride

3. Have short brain breaks throughout the day

Being active releases chemicals in the brain that increase concentration and alertness! So whenever you feel a dip in your child’s motivation or concentration or they are finding a task particularly difficult, try a quick active brain break. Then return to the work and notice the difference! Visit Active 30 Durham Hub for some ideas for brain breaks.

4. Record and reward time spent being active

It can be motivating to record activity, see progress being made and be rewarded along the way. Perhaps create a reward chart where children can colour in the number of minutes they are active within the day. You can create goals and targets depending on your child’s starting point when it comes to activity. Some examples could be:

Completing 60 minutes on X number of days in the week.
Completing X number of minutes on a certain day or number of days
Completing 60 minutes for a streak of X days

What rewards can you give your children for completing their goal? Perhaps your child can think of some too!

To be effective for health benefits and to truly meet the CMO guidelines the activity levels should be moderate to vigorous. Our blog about what this is and how to measure it may be helpful.

5. Integrate movement with learning

If you can integrate movement with learning then you can kill two birds with one stone! We are slightly biased but we would argue that this can be more fun and engaging for some children. Active learning is something that is now very common in schools. Some ideas you could try:

Relay style games to collect answers or objects to then sort.
Treasure Hunts with questions or puzzles as clues or number/shape hunts in the house or outside.
Using your body to give answers e.g. squat for true, lunge for false, create letters or shapes with your body.
Target games with answers to hit or knock off or throwing a specific number to a target.

We hope you find these top tips helpful. We know juggling everything is challenging right now and we feel physical activity can be especially helpful to relieve stress, improve concentration and improve mood. It can be incorporated little and often into your day or in bigger chunks; whatever suits you best. I n Lockdown 1 children’s physical activity levels dropped significantly and we would like to support parents and schools to keep children moving in Lockdown 3. We have created some free to access resources that may be helpful:

Physical activity and wellness activties.

A Weekly challenge fusing physical activity and creativity.

Workout of the Week

Mental Wellbeing Activities

You can access them here – Lockdown 3 Resources

The difference between physical activity and Physical Education and balancing them both in Lockdown 3.

Post author By Sarah Price
Post date January 7, 2021

When children are at school they take part in both Physical Education (recommended 2 hours per week) AND physical activity (recommended 30 minutes a day in school).

There are distinct differences between the two:

Physical Activity is ‘…all bodily movement that uses energy’ (AfPE)

Physical Education…’ takes place in a school curriculum…and involves learning to move and moving to learn’ (AfPE)

Benefits of each

Both types of movement provide many benefits for young people:

Benefits of Physical Activity	Benefits of Physical Education
1. Improve physical health and fitness 2. Improve mental health and well being 3. Improve cognitive function 4. Reduce the risk of some diseases 5. Social interaction with friends and family members 6. Ease of access – scope for all to be involved as there will be no financial cost, equipment not always necessary.	1. Points 1-5 of Physical Activity benefits 2. Improved physical literacy 3. The knowledge and understanding of how to lead a healthy lifestyle 4. Developing wider skills – eg: leadership, communication skills, resilience, teamwork, confidence and social skills 5. Acquiring the technique to perform individual transferable physical skills; being given the chance to develop them and put them into practise in a variety of environments 6.Evaluating skills; recognising what is good and what requires improvement and how to go about this 7. Breadth of opportunity – being able to unlock possible potential through a rich menu of high quality experiences 8. Personal targets and challenges and how to set these, to help individuals to achieve and make progress
Examples of Physical Activities	Examples of Physical Education Activities
Going for a walk, jog or run Going on a bike ride Doing the housework Doing some DIY Gardening Taking part in a fitness class Recreational sport	A wide variety of sports and activities – Games, Swimming, Gymnastics, Dance, Outdoor Education Adapted games and activities that have a key objective Learning rules and regulations Being a sports leader Refereeing, umpiring and officiating Potential to gain qualifications not only in PE but also in leadership and officiating

There is some clear overlap between the two.

When children take part in Physical Education they are likely to also be physically active. However, when children take part in physical activity, there may not be strong elements of learning taking place, that would equate to that within a Physical Education session. Learning is the key element of Physical Education.

Many children and parents are currently grappling with the demands of ‘home learning’. Providing physical activity and Physical Education opportunities within this can be helpful not just for physical health and physical literacy but also for looking after mental health and creating a readiness to complete academic work set.

Our suggestion while learning at home, is to find the balance that suits you best, but to try to include both Physical Education and physical activity opportunities. A good aim would be to meet the Chief Medical Officers guidelines of 60 minutes of activity a day and split that between physical activity and Physical Education. You could do this in a variety of ways, for example:

20 mins Physical education per day, 40 mins physical activity per day
2 days Physical Education focus, 3 days physical activity focus

There are a range of resources available to support parents to encourage their children to be active at home. A good selection of these can be found on the Active 30 Durham Hub (open to all – link below).

Top tips for delivering Physical Education based activities at home

Use a Physical Education based resource
Give demonstrations to your child (or ask other siblings to) to show good technique
Ask your children questions during the activity such as “How does it feel? How can you improve your technique? When would you use this?”
Have lots of fun interacting with your child and watching them achieve and learn new things!
Practise to improve and be proud of all achievements!

Good luck!

This blog was a collaboration between multiple members of the Go Well team. For more information email info@go-well.org.

Further links that may be helpful

AfPE Importance of Physical Education, School Sport and Physical Activity Resources

Active 30 Durham Hub

Other blogs that may be useful

5 ideas for schools to support physical activity at home

Why moderate to vigorous intensity exercise is important for children and how to measure it

Go Well Blog

Making the most of Fitness in Education – How to design Fitness sessions to incorporate Personal Development.

Post author By Sarah Price
Post date December 10, 2020

We have seen a significant boom in the inclusion of fitness based sessions in Primary Schools following the popularity of ‘PE’ with Joe in lockdown and the concerns over decreasing fitness levels of children that became evident.

I say PE in inverted commas as I think it is fair to say that, on behalf of PE practitioners in my team that Joe Wicks MBE provided a fitness session as opposed to a physical education lesson.

Children following the instructor on the screen like for like, for me, has its limitations. Yes, children are moving but:

How do we ensure children are performing the correct technique?
How do the children know if they are working at the right intensity levels?
How do we keep them engaged and interested in the long term?
What are they learning?

In an education setting, I feel like we can achieve so much more. We are missing a trick in what more a fitness session can bring to our children.

How to design Fitness sessions to incorporate Personal Development

I want to write today about how we can make the best use of a fitness session, in an education setting, whether that be within a PE lesson or as part of Active 30 provision, to bring about personal development.

We know schools have very little time in their day to fit in everything they have to and want to do. With a well-planned and prepared fitness programme we can make a significant impact not only on physical health, mental health but on character building too – all at the same time.

Intent is a word used a lot now in education; if our intent is to incorporate character building to our session then how we design the session is key.

Here are a few tips on what you can do to develop the following skills/values through fitness sessions:

Resilience/Determination

Fitness itself should be a tough exercise to take part in. The aim is to get out of breath and sweaty, to be in the moderate to vigorous intensity zone and stay there. Children can find this difficult (as can adults!). Quite often we see children giving up when it gets a little tough. So how we can encourage them to keep going? We encourage two key things in this area:

Reward effort

For us, one of the key aims of a fitness session is to be working in the right intensity zone. Whether that takes me 100 reps or 10 it really doesn’t matter. Reward effort, reward the children working at the right intensity levels and doing their best. You can access our Rate of Perceived Exertion to help with this.

Set personal goals

We do not advocate making all workouts competitive at a primary age, but seeing progress can motivate a young person to keep going and be determined. Perhaps pick a few workouts or challenges to use as a measure of fitness, complete them in Week 1 and repeat them in Week 6 with the aim of achieving their personal best.

Teamwork/Communication

We can design workouts where teamwork and communication are required to be successful. See below a work together workout from our Fit for Life programme. Here the children have to work in a pair to complete the workout; they will have to communicate with each other and work together to complete it. A personal favourite is adding ‘synced’ movements, where all team members have to complete a movement at the same time, such as a burpee. To do this successfully they have to talk to each other, perhaps even communicate non verbal when they are out of breath to stay in sync!

Problem Solving/Strategising

We can design team workouts where children have to work together to create a strategy of how best to complete the workout. Let the children discuss and decide how to split up the reps, give them an aim as this may change their strategy e.g. the aim is for everyone to be working at moderate to vigorous intensity, the aim is to complete the challenge in the fastest time, the aim is to get as many reps as possible, the aim is to perform the movements with the highest quality.

In an individual workout we can provide a rep scheme that involves some decision making and strategy forming. E.g.

Complete in any order:

50 squats
50 press ups
50 lunges
50 torso twists

Do you work through doing 50, 50, 50, 50? Or do you 10 of each until it’s complete? 5 of each? Pair the movements? Easiest first? There are so many options to assess and decisions to make! It will make for a fascinating discussion back in the classroom.

Also, you can allow multiple attempts at the same workout to allow different strategies to be tested.

Empathy/Compassion

There should be no one in the class finding the fitness session easy. If they are, you aren’t challenging them enough or they aren’t challenging themselves enough. We are all going to find ourselves struggling at some point in a fitness session, whether we can’t crack a move or we are totally out of breath and don’t think we can do another rep. If we find ourselves in this position in an individual workout we will need some encouragement from our peers. If we find ourselves in this position in a group workout we will need the support of our peers and they’ll know how we’re feeling at some point! But it can stretch a little wider than that, we now all know how it can feel to struggle at something and we can empathise with others when they struggle too, in any area of life.

For all of the above, they won’t just happen with good design. Fitness doesn’t teach personal development – we do.

Fitness is one of the mediums/activities that we can use to do it. How we design our sessions, what questions we ask, what discussions we prompt before, during and after a session helps children to learn and develop these key life skills/values.

If you haven’t got time to plan and prepare a fitness programme like this for your class or school but are interested in the concept, do get in touch – we can help.

For more information contact: sarahprice@go-well.org

Further information:

Blog – Why moderate to vigorous intensity exercise is important to children and how to measure it.

www.fitforlifeschools.org.uk

Go Well Blog

5 ideas for schools to support children to be active at home

Post author By Sarah Price
Post date November 12, 2020

We are currently in National Lockdown 2.0; engaging children in regular physical activity is becoming more and more challenging. Some reasons for this may include:

Space and time in school is limited with staggered lunchtimes and deteriorating weather
Community sport and recreation opportunities are cancelled
After school clubs are limited to bubbles
The dark nights are setting in
We are all spending the majority of our time at home

While schools continue to aim to provide 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity in school time, which in itself is tricky, the additional 30 minutes out of school is providing a significant challenge.

We know that schools want to help their parents and communities to support children to be active outside of school. We know being physically active is super important for physical health and mental health and we know the pandemic is negatively affecting the health and well-being of our children. So what can we do?

Here are a few ideas…

1. Virtual After School Clubs

Why not? We all have taken big steps into the digital world and live virtual delivery has been successful in many settings. Joe Wicks got us started in Lockdown 1.0 but we have equally seen local sports club set up ‘zoom’ type sessions to continue engagement in their activities. Schools are becoming more comfortable with home learning and digital platforms; this could really be an option to expand the current, potentially limited, after school club provision.

It could be school staff delivering or you could engage with an external provider. The Youth Sport Trust have also just announced that they will be providing a livestream virtual after school club at 5pm each night.

‘After School Sport Club’ will run for five weeks until December 18 and children and young people can take part live by visiting the YST’s YouTube channel, www.youtube.com/user/YouthSportTrust.

2. A Challenge or Competition

We have found that themes or challenges/competitions are a great way of engaging people young and old in physical activity. In our ‘One Million Steps to Wellness challenge’ I walked over twice as many steps as I would in an average week. A half termly, weekly or daily challenge may just spark that engagement. Here are some quick ideas:

A steps challenge similar to our ‘One Million Steps to Wellness’. Give a step target to a child as an individual, create small teams, or travel collectively somewhere as a class or bubble!
Sport themed half-terms with a different activity each week e.g. Athletics, Football. Each child could have a go at the activity on a Monday and create a score, with the aim being to beat that score on Friday. Start it at school, practice it at home!
Contribute to a total – did you hear about the girl who accumulated over 1 million “keepy upy’s” over Lockdown 1.0? You could copy that with your class/school/bubble or come up with your own idea of a skill to use. Throw and catch off a wall, squats, minutes of dancing…anything you or the children can think of!

3. Promote Resources Available to Parents

Why re-invent the wheel? There are numerous resources out there now that can support children to be active at home. A simple newsletter or notification to parents of what is available may go a long way. Although, perhaps using these as a theme or challenge would enhance engagement further. Here are some useful links:

Youth Sport Trust Free Downloadable Resources: https://www.youthsporttrust.org/free-resources

Change for Life Activities for Children: https://www.nhs.uk/change4life/activities

Active 30 Durham Home Resource Catalogue: https://www.countydurhamsport.com/young-people/active-30/home/

4. Promote Active Travel

A 15 minute brisk walk/run/scoot/bike ride to school and 15 minute brisk walk/run/scoot/bike ride home would clock up a child’s 30 minutes of activity needed outside of school time. Can you incentivise or reward Active Travel to school?

5. Activity Tracking

Setting goals and activity tracking can support children (and adults) to maintain engagement in physical activity. A useful aim is to reach the CMO guidelines of 60 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity each day. Individual goals would be preferred, if time allows, as children will all begin from a different starting point.

3 Top Tips:

Involve the children in the planning/delivery/promotion

We know teachers are really stretched at the moment. This could be a project for a group of sports leaders.

Keep it varied and vibrant

To maintain the engagement, keep mixing it up! Use multiple ideas above in a longer plan/programme.

Reward engagement

Celebrate success of children being active outside of school to maintain the motivation of those engaged but also to encourage those less engaged to join in

We hope you found this blog helpful, if you have then you may find these previous blogs useful too:

6 ways to integrate Physical Activity

Why moderate to vigorous activity is important for children and how to measure it

Young people should undertake 60 minutes of moderate intensity activity over the course of a day. In this blog we explore how you can support your class as they return to school and help them to develop an active and healthy lifestyle.

Take advantage of our special offer and get more for you and your school – all schools signing up for a
three-year licence will receive a FREE set of activity equipment worth £349.95.

Further Reading