Category Archives: Active Flag

Be Active ASAP

Parents and pupils in both 1st Classes are welcome to join our Be Active After School Activity Programme; parents as volunteers and pupils as participants! Parents were informed at our recent information evening, those who missed out can find out more here:  http://www.beactiveasap.ie/the-programme/about For further information on volunteering/ joining please contact Claire O’Malley in room 6.

Sessions will continue every Wednesday after school and give pupils an opportunity to increase their physical activity and confidence across a range of sports.

Our first session with 35 pupils participating took place yesterday, October 12th, and was great fun for all.

Parental/ guardian involvement and teacher volunteerism is vital for the success of the programme so a big thank you to our parents who volunteered yesterday:  Michael, Ningning, Van and Karolina and to the following teachers who have volunteered for sessions this year: Aishling, David, Elaine, Sandra, Úna and Michael.

Have a look a our young talent in action!

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Our Teachers are Taught a Lesson!

As part of our efforts to gain the Active flag this year our teachers took part in some professional development on Monday October 10th. Catherine Knight from the Professional Development Service for Teachers came to Ashbourne to review our new whole school PE plan and gave us a practical session with best practice and guidelines on teaching the dance and gymnastics strands of our PE curriculum. Here are a few photos of the teachers in action!

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Fitness Friday!

Celine and Anna from Energie Fitness Ashbourne took 1st and 2nd Classes for fun fitness sessions in honour of the European Week of Sport’s ‘Fitness Friday’. Celine spoke to them about the importance of fueling our bodies well to get the best out of them before putting pupils through their paces with bird, snake, frog and horse walks amongst others. Pupils finished the session moving to music. Thanks to Celine and Anna for coming in!

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Olympic Handball

Patrick MacAuley, Irish National Handball Athlete, and Sarah Moloney from Lughnasa Handball Club coached our 3rd and 4th Classes on Thursday. As part of the this week’s European Week of Sport pupils were encouraged to try a new sport and the Irish Olympic Handball Association obliged by sending out Patrick and Sarah to introduce Olympic handball  to our pupils.

Pupils learned to play the game with some modified rules; 3 steps were allowed with the ball along with one bounce, 3 throws had to take place before a score was allowed, the goalies area was kept clear and tackling was kept non contact.

Tactical sideline games with running noughts and crosses had waiting teams kept busy when off the handball court.

Thanks to Patrick, Sarah and Susan from IOHA  for bringing Olympic Handball to Ashbourne ETNS.

Have a look at some brave efforts here!

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Fit4Class

Róisín and Emily’s Junior Infants haven been piloting a new athletics programme for the last 10 weeks. Fit4CLass is being rolled out to encourage schools to introduce pupils to athletics through the use of games to develop fitness whilst enhancing agility, co-ordination and balance.

Daniel Kilgallon,  Athletics Ireland, came to our school today to present the Junior Infants with wristbands to celebrate their completion of the pilot. Daniel brought a special guest with him, former Olympian and double European Indoor 400m champion David Gillick. Prompted by some great questions from our 2nd and 3rd Classes David spoke about how he loved winning races from a young age so he joined his local athletics club and that his diet consists of things that, “grew, ran, swam or flew”.

Athletics Ireland also gave the school an athletics pack with great equipment such as javelins, shot puts and discuses which will be put to good use during athletics lessons in PE. Well done to all our Junior Infants and their teachers for their athletic endeavours!

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