Primary School P.E and Sport Conference Wednesday 20 August

Recently, the Sports team attended the first Canterbury Regional Primary P.E and Sport conference.  It was hosted by Sport Canterbury and drew on schools all around the Canterbury and Southern Canterbury region. Guest speakers included Glen Green, the CEO of "There's a better way" foundation and various speakers from both Sport NZ and Sport Canterbury.

The day was a gold mine of ideas, exploration and inspiration! We took away valuable information and will now get together to develop an action plan for ways we can help improve our systems and P.E delivery at Clearview.

Here is a summary of the key points that arose from the day:

- For many children, they have already made up their mind if they are 'good or not' at school before they have left primary school. For many, sport is a pathway to seeing themselves as 'good' at something.

- Teaching P.E, playing a game with the class or doing fitness are separate components, all of them need to be covered.

- What ever we teach, P.E or any other subject, we need to feel inspired and remember why we love doing it - it's very easy to get weighed down in paper work, or let things at the end of the day be done with less enthusiasm.

- Specialist P.E people are becoming more important in the delivery of a well balanced P.E programme. How we use these specialists and what we take from their teaching is extremely valuable.

- Sally Small spoke about Potential. We can identify potential in children by providing opportunities and assess individuals areas of potential in categories: Physical, Social, Personal, Cognitive, Creative.

- Using the differentiated learning presented by Sally Small: STEP helps us think of a game or task and change the 4 components; Space, Task, Equipment, People. This makes the game differentiated for all players. This can help build on their potential in various areas.

- Dave Harrison presented on the PALs programme at Somerfield school and it's massive success. Led by Y 5/6 children,  every child has something to do at lunchtimes and they have no behaviour problems over an hour lunchtime.

- At Somerfield school nearly 450 children participate in sport out of 500. Teams are linked to clubs in the community and children are supported by the clubs so drop-off rates are low.


After talking to Jimmy who is our Sport Canterbury rep., we have been seen as a school with high energy and enthusiasm for sport, that is well resourced and has a great foundation of knowledge. So we should be proud of what we already achieve as a school. The sports team's aim is now how to take an already good thing and discuss ways to make sure we have the best systems in place for full coverage in P.E and make a plan for what 2015 will look like.