Active Flag

This year, we are working towards earning our first Active Flag. You can view all our hard work here!

PLAY HARD, PLAY SMART, PLAY TOGETHER!

We are busy here in Scoil Mhuire Milford working towards our first Active Schools Flag. The Active School Flag (ASF) is awarded to schools that strive to achieve a physically educated and physically active school community. The process aims to get more schools, more active, more often. We have been working on our flag in 2023/2024 and 2025 and aim to maintain our high standards and focus on being active.

Physical Education

P.E. School Plan

Junior Infants to 1st class are taught five of the six strands of the PE curriculum each year and 2nd to 6th class are taught all 6 strands. The six strands are: Aquatics, Athletics, Games, Dance, Gymnastics and Outdoor and Adventure.

Since undertaking the Active School Flag, the school has created a standardised PE timetable for the school year so that all classes are taught the same strand at the same time. The standardised PE timetable ensures a balanced amount of teaching time to these strands throughout the school year.

The plan highlights the PSSI lesson plans to guide teachers in their planning of PE. The PSSI lessons have been made easily accessible for all teachers to use. We have decided to teach four skills this year, walking, running, throwing and catching. All teachers use the Move Well Move Often resources.

The school plan also ensures that P.E. homework is given during active week. P.E. is discussed with parents at P.T. meetings and feedback is included in the annual school report.

Class PE Timetables

Physical Education is allocated 1 hour per week of overall teaching time. In November, the Active Schools Committee checked that every class has 60 minutes PE time in their timetable. They confirmed that all classes were timetabled for 60 minutes a week. All classes opted for two 30 minutes slots. Discretionary time is also used towards PE.

PE Equipment

Our Active School Committee along with teachers and SNAs carried out the PE equipment audit. PE equipment was counted and a record of all PE equipment in the school was taken. This record will be kept near where the PE equipment is stored.

The audit allowed us to see what equipment we already have in the school and what equipment we needed to get. As a result of the audit we invested in some new equipment for the school. This included new balls, skipping ropes and tennis rackets.

Land Paws

Second to Sixth class take part in swimming lessons each year. In 5th class, each year we learn all about water safety.

Through the Land Paws programme from the Irish Water Safety Association we find out about water safety in the pool, in the home, on a boat, on the beach, on the farm and on the waterways. We also learn what to do if we saw somebody get into difficulty in the water. 3rd to 6th participated in PAWS training with a visit from Water Safety Ireland.

Physical Activity

Break Times

We have two breaks throughout the school day where the children are encouraged to go outside and play.

Active Lines

From Monday to Friday the Active Committee Members in the class lead their classmates in a number of exercises to keep them active.

Break Everyday Challenge

Over a four week period each class had a movement break in class. This meant that every class was committed to taking an Active Break Every Day over the four weeks. The benefits of this for the pupils are improved concentration in class, improved fitness and improved long term health benefits. Classes tried out different activity breaks including running breaks, dance breaks and exercise breaks. Many classes used Go Noodle for dance breaks, 10@10 Classroom Movement Breaks, in association with Bizzy Breaks for Bizzy Minds and Bodies from Irish Heart Foundation. Some classes went for walks around the school, running or created an exercise box where a child had to choose an exercise at random for the class to complete.

Active Breaks

It’s not easy for adults or children to sit for long periods of time without getting restless and losing focus. Here in Scoil Mhuire, we incorporate lots of movement breaks in throughout the day to ensure we get a break from our seats and are kept focused. These breaks could be an action song, 10@10, an activity from ‘GoNoodle’ or Drop Everything and Dance.

K a Day

It has been a long tradition in Scoil Mhuire to Run a K a Day. The 1k was measured and it equals roughly 3 laps of the school. As running is so good for us both physically and mentally we do this everyday. When we can get a bit tired and restless from trying to sit and concentrate in class. We come back in refreshed and ready to set to work again. Our school also took part in the Run around Europe challenge.

Physical Activity throughout the Year

September: Run Around Europe

October: Witches Walk, Catch the Broom, Beat the Witch Relays

Maths Week: Trails, maths eyes (maths in the environment)

November: Active Break Everyday Challenge

December: Christmas Santa Bop

January: Active Challenge- Which Class can fit in the most?

February 14th: Mind your Heart Day

March: Seachtain na Gaeilge Ceili, Outdoor dancing, Walk to School

April: Active Home Work

May: Inter Class Challenge; Which class can do the most keepie uppies, jumps or skips in a month?

June: Take on the teachers challenge Football match.

Partnerships

Active School Committee

One of the most important partnerships in the Active School Flag programme is with the pupils of the school. It is really the pupils that run the initiative while being supported by their teachers. It is important that all pupils have an opinion on the initiatives and activities we carry out so at the beginning of each year an Active School committee is selected. It is the role of the committee to represent their class at meetings and bring forward new ideas. The committee members have many different types of leadership roles. These include, playground leaders, PE equipment monitor leaders, active line leaders, yard monitors at breaks to ensure everyone is being active and people are walking while they talk. The committee members are also very good at reminding their teachers to take movement breaks throughout the day and do K a Day. We aim to have a committee meeting once a month and a committee member takes the minutes of these meetings. There’s a photo of our 2023-2024 Active School Committee on our school website and Facebook page.

Active School Suggestions Box

To make sure that all pupils had their voices heard we have our Active School Week suggestions folder on the Active Flag notice board in the hallway. Children can write down their ideas on a piece of paper and anonymously post it in the suggestions box. Many of the ideas that the children suggest are planned for our Active School Week.

Active School Notice Board

We have dedicated a notice board in our school hall to the Active School Flag. You can get information here about who is on our committee and ways to keep active. You can also take a look at some photos of what we were up to.

Parents

Parents are a very important part of the Active School process. Parents are kept updated on the Active School process through discussing it with their children, letters home from the Active School committee, the Active School notice board and the Active School page here on the website and on Facebook. The parents here in Scoil Mhuire play an important role in ensuring their children have the clothes and equipment needed for P.E. and any other physical activities taking place in the school. They also support us in promoting the message that children need to be physically active for sixty minutes per day by bringing their children to after school physical activities, going for walks and cycles with their children and helping them fill out their physical activity diary for school. Our parents also have the opportunity to offer suggestions for Active School initiatives through our parents’ questionnaire, suggestions box, writing a note to a teacher or popping in to have a word with a teacher.

Local Sports Partnership

When we started the Active School Flag process we contacted the Local Sports Partnership and the HSE Health Promotion Officer to inform them of our involvement. They send us regular e-mails to tell us about different physical initiatives, training and courses. Following on from this, Mr. Mc Conigley & Ms. Doherty attended a course on Well-being through physical activity. We also worked with our local GAA team CLG Baile na nGallóglach, Milford Athletics and the local basketball team as well as the FAI, through tournaments and Futsal tournaments which Mr. McConigley received training in and introduced to children on yard. We were delighted to welcome Daniel O’Reilly who plays for the Irish Down Syndrome team to the school where he showed off his skills for the children.

Cycle Right Cycle Training

Our 5th class received cycling workshops from Cycle Right Training for 4 weeks in October. We learned a lot about staying safe when cycling on the road, the safety equipment that needs to be used when cycling and the correct cycling techniques to use. The training also gave us even more opportunity to be active throughout the day and we had great fun. 5th class were delighted to get to cycle on the main road on the last day of the programme.

Local Community

We are so lucky here in Scoil Mhuire that there are many physical activity clubs in Milford and the surrounding areas. During the Active School process we carried out a survey to see what clubs the pupils were involved in. We found out that many children were involved in football, ladies’ football, Irish dancing, basketball, gymnastics, soccer, swimming and athletics. We got the chance to tell each other about the different clubs and any flyers we get with information about these clubs we send home with the children to show their parents and we stick them up on the notice board. We also have local Basketball, Athletics and GAA coaches who come in to us to do training with us.

Physical Activity and Sports Achievements

Acknowledgement and encouragement is just as important in the areas of physical education, activity and sport as it is in all other curricular areas. For any physical activity achievement, be it in school or outside school we encourage our pupils to bring in their trophy, medal and certificate etc. that they achieved and tell their classmates about it. They also go around classes to tell the other class about it and then their photo is taken to be included on our Active Well Done Wall.

Active School Week

Since beginning the Active School Flag process we had committed to holding an even better Active School Week this year. We had got in touch with many clubs in the surrounding areas to come in to give taster sessions. We had a wide and varied range of sports signed up to suit all tastes, from golf to gymnastics, dance to Pilates, yoga to cricket. As well as our yearly teachers v students football match.

As an Active School we aim to:

• Provide all pupils with appropriate PE provision,teach a broad and balanced P.E. curriculum and ensure that the P.E. policy is both comprehensive and up to date.
• Celebrate physical activity skills and achievements by students on our ASF board.
• Promote physical activity during break times
• Involve students in the process (ASF committee) and liaise with parents and the local community
• Seek assistance from the community and outside agencies such as local sports partnerships and National bodies

As part of the Active flag initiative we want everyone to be as active as possible.

Active School flag Committee

Faye, Jamie, Liam, Ailbe, Enya, Juan, Casey, Thomas, Grace, Emily, Leon.

Skip Around Europe.

Our school will participate in the Skip around Europe challenge for four weeks from March 31st to May 9th 2025. Committee members from each class will be given the task of adding the distances outside each classroom door.

Here are some of the activities our school participates in:

GAA Training

Cumann na mBunscoil

Football

FAI 5 a side

Futsal

Gymnastics

Basketball

Athletics

Swimming

Badminton

Teachers vs 6th class football match

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Active School Notice Boare

Scoil Mhuire Active Walkway

Have a look at our active walkway here.

Olympians Live! with Rhys McClenaghan

2nd Class and 5th Class joined Olympic Champion Gymnast Rhys McClenaghan and his Dancing with the Stars partner Laura Nolan for Olympians Live over Zoom. They taught the children different dance steps and showed off some gymnastics moves.

FAI 5 a Side

Well done to both the boys and girls teams who competed in the FAI 5 a side competition in Letterkenny yesterday. Both teams played great throughout the day with the girls very unlucky in the final. ⚽️

Sporthall Athletics

Pupils from 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th Class had a great day competing in the Sporthall Athletics event at the Aura Leisure Centre. Each pupil performed extremely well in the various activities.
A special thanks to Milford AC Juveniles who helped to prepare the children for the event. Have a look at the children in action here.

Futsal

3rd and 4th Class Boys and Girls participated in a FAI Futsal Competition at the Aura. Both teams performed superbly on the day. Maith sibh ⚽️🥅

Gaelic

Both our Gaelic teams are through to the County Finals after their matches today. The girls won all 3 games, while the boys won 2 and drew 1! Well done everyone, you were fantastic 👏🏐

Walk to School Morning

The children really enjoyed our Walk to School morning in September.

Mini Sports Day

Mini Sports Day in the sun.

Belfast Marathon

In May, 10 members of our staff decided to run the Belfast Marathon - two relay teams of five. We wanted to show that it is important for the staff to be active as well as the children. We thoroughly enjoyed the experience!

Run Around Europe and Fyffes Fit Squad

Our school recently took part in the Run Around Europe Challenge and Fyffes Fit Squad. Here are a few clips. Well done to all involved 🏃‍♂️ 🏃‍♀️ 👏

Sports Day 2024

We had a great day at Sports Day. Click on these links to see how much fun we had in these photos and video.

Orienteering

Active Week and Wellbeing Week

Have a look at some of our photos from Active Week and Wellbeing Week here.

LAC Track and Field

FAI Schools Primary 5s

Letterkenny Cup Final

Our boys did fantistically to reach the final of the Letterkenny Cup but were very unlucky with a narrow defeat to St. Eunan's Raphoe in the final. The whole team put in an excellent performance. Well done to our keeper who was Man of the Match after scoring two goals and making some excellent saves. We are very proud of all the boys.

Cumann na mBunscoil

Our two teams who represented the school in Gaelic football at Cumann na mBunscoil.

Visit from an Irish International Player

We had a special guest at school! Ireland International Daniel O'Reilly visited to teach the classes about Futsal and talk about his experience in the European Championships where he scored the first ever goal for Ireland! ⚽️🇮🇪 He brought in his International cap to show all the children too. What an inspiration Daniel is, we were so lucky he visited 🌟

Active School Slogan

Our school came up with a slogan for our Active School Flag which we are working towards this year. There was a shortlist made and the slogan decided is Play Hard, Play Smart, Play Together. Play is going to be central for our school while being active and working towards the Active Flag. A page will be set up on our website so you can track our progress. 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️⚽️🏐🏀

5th Class Went Cycling 🚴‍♀️🚴‍♂️

5th Class recently completed the Cycle Right Programme. The boys and girls loved it. They learned all about the rules of the road and gained a lot of confidence cycling. You can see the boys and girls got to cycle on the main road with their instructors on the final day in this video.🚴‍♀️🚴‍♂️

Walk to School Day

Have a look at our Walk to School Day here.

Fit for Life

Meet our Active School Committee