What does it mean to keep healthy?
Keeping healthy means doing things that are good for your body – things like eating nutritious foods, exercising, brushing your teeth and getting enough sleep.
It’s important to understand how what you eat and what you do affects your body. A balanced diet means that your body is getting all the nutrients it needs. Brushing your teeth at least twice a day helps prevent tooth decay. Exercising for around 30-60 minutes each day means that you’ll stay fit and burn the right amount of calories.
How do we Keep Healthy at St George's?
We teach a variety of subjects in PE as required and set out by the government in the National Curriculum. We have a specialist PE teacher who teaches PE to each class for one lesson per week, in addition to the lesson taught by class teachers.
Early Years pupils participate in a range of activities to help develop their sports skills from an early age. They have access to outdoor areas where they will develop their co-ordination and build their team work skills. Skills that will help them throughout the rest of their schooling.
As well as PE lessons our school council carry out morning runs for each of the classes, where children get to challenge themselves and try to beat their lap score from the previous week. Children across the school also take part in inter school competitions including cross-country, football and multi skills.
All children receive a free healthy school meal provided by Harrisons, with regularly changing menu to meet the needs of the children.
The PE and Sports Network (PESSN)
As part of our sports premium funding we have a school membership with the PE and Sports network. Through this membership the children have the opportunity to attend various sporting festivals, take part in inter school competitions and try new sports that they might not have the opportunity to try elsewhere. Through these opportunities, last year, the St George’s girls football team got through to and went on to win in the final of the football league, bringing a trophy back to school. They also provide links to local sporting clubs and support the school with PE provision.
Each class has one session per week taught by qualified sports coaches. Each class will have a dance topic across the year taught by a qualified dance teacher as well as learning skills to play sports such as Hockey, Benchball, Handball, Cricket, Athletics and Multi-skills. They are also providing links with local schools to play inter-school football matches.
Swimming Lessons and Water Safety
At St George's, we recognise the importance of children learning to swim and to be able to perform safe self-rescue at an early age, pupils should be taught to;
- swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres
- use a range of strokes effectively [for example, front crawl, backstroke and breaststroke]
- perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations
We have recently evaluated our provision of swimming, therefore this year we are providing swimming lessons in the autumn term for Year 6, spring and part summer term for Year 4 and a summer refresher course for Year 6.
Our children take their swimming lessons at Everyone Active in Elephant & Castle Leisure Centre.
As children spend so much of their time in schools, teachers and support staff are in a prime position to help children build strong mental health and well-being, as well as spot if something is wrong. At St George’s we aim to encourage and support children in developing strategies in keeping healthy emotionally and mentally. We believe children’s mental health is just as important as their physical health.