Triple AAA Sports Day Week
As our traditional Sports Day couldn’t take place this year due to ongoing restrictions, our innovative PE & Sports Department came up with an exciting alternative that got pupils fully involved while still offering the opportunity for healthy competition. Of course, Sports Day is always one of the biggest events of the year and it has been wonderful to see the ‘House Fever’ spread across the school during the course of the week! The battle lines were drawn (mostly in face paints) and chanting was heard from the battlements as one bubble cheered for their Houses in another bubble from a very safe distance.
Mrs Jones, PE & Sports teacher was delighted with the outcome:
“Similar to the standards system, we came up with the idea of everyone participating in everything and then awarding bronze, silver and gold certificates. For each event and age group, there was a framework time or distance for gold, silver and bronze. We said to the children, you’re taking part against yourself, so it doesn’t matter who you are competing against. I think that really helped them relax and focus on their own personal bests.”
All pupils took part, focusing on maximum participation and experience of an athletic event. Each pupil participated in the events and their times or distances were recorded. Events involved track events of 100m and 800m, long jump, shot and javelin.
Mrs Jones explained the atmosphere down on our games pitches: “For each bubble, on every day, the atmosphere was amazing. And everyone put everything into the competition, even though they were competing against themselves. I think they enjoyed it more than they expected to! The races were in groups of 6 so there was still a healthy competitive atmosphere.”
She continued, “We had such a great turn out from year 13 on their day. They said that of course they wanted to come – it’s their last Sports Day. They were excited to be engaged in an activity as a whole year group. George and Josh were singing YMCA and there was so much encouragement from everyone.”
Such was the success that the PE & Sports Department is going to retain the activity for next year’s programme: “It was really good for pupils to experience everything rather than just participating in the events that they are best at,” explained Mrs Jones. “Next year, when hopefully we can do our inter-school competitions again, we can have the standards set up like this year in PE lessons and then have the traditional Sports Day at the end. This way, our pupils will have the opportunity to participate in a good range of events rather than just one or two on Sports Day.”
On Monday, to kick off Sports Day week, the PTA kindly organised and paid for ice cream vans to arrive on the forecourt and all pupils and staff were treated to Mr. Whippy ice creams and ice lollies. As expected, there were lots of grateful smiling faces, especially Mr. Delaney who was spotted eating a double scoop Mr. Whippy with a flake AND chocolate sauce! A big thank you to Karen Shepherd and Rachel Morgans from the PTA for organising such a treat!