Context
Background Information
After speaking with PE lead teachers about their understanding of Physical Literacy, we have been looking for innovative ways to enable more young people in the borough to enjoy movement in their everyday life. It was clear that not everyone understood what was meant by the term physical literacy.
What was the aim of work?
Having recognised the vital role that the primary school workforce plays in providing positive experiences of physical activity and movement, it became clear that the conversation needed to start with key stakeholders from all levels.
This includes teachers and teaching assistants, midday supervisors, and young people themselves as playground leaders. The aim was to educate them as to what physical literacy is, ensure we tap into their positive memories/relationship with movement and then think about those who often shy away from being active and try to identify what motivating factors may encourage them to find connection and meaning with movement. This would include speaking to the young people about their interests and seeing where they could be linked to movement.
Which outcome(s) did it focus on?
- 1. To advocate and position the delivery of the CMO daily active minutes for all young people, as a universal offer to maintain and grow school engagement
Which expectation(s) did it meet?
- Using local insight and youth engagement to identify young people and schools that would most benefit from a targeted School Games offer.
- Developing strategies to improve knowledge and understanding of the School Games for key stakeholders.
- Work with schools to maintain and grow their active engagement in School Games.
- Identify schools that are not engaged and developing strategies to improve this.
- Planning for and increasing delivery of 60 active minutes for every child.
- Provide an offer of professional development and communication for all schools to increase their understanding and increase their provision of 60 active minutes.
- Work intensively with a minimum of two low engagement schools to improve their understanding, engagement and access of the School Games offer.
Intent
Overview
The aim was to work with wider school staff who we may not regularly have contact with, to educate them and ensure they are aware of what physical literacy is and how it can support an active school environment. We want them to help support the 60 active minutes offer and engage the least active students, enabling them more opportunities to connect with movement and therefore enable them to move more.
We recognised that some of these staff have access to students at some of the only times within the school day where there is nothing planned and therefore nothing that has to be rearranged or reduced to accommodate.
Target group
- All School Staff
- Primary Schools
Aligns to Schools Games Intents of:
- Improve health and wellbeing (i.e. 60 active minutes)
- To engage/influence wider stakeholders
Implementation
Schools were offered the opportunity to book in a free staff inset around active schools, 60 Active Minutes and Physical Literacy. We emailed all schools but then specifically targeted a handful of schools who have had little or no engagement in the school games. This also gave us an opportunity to meet with their headteachers to discuss what we wanted to do and put the school games on their radar.
During the training I use one of 2 tasks.
- Physical literacy timeline - (Axis PL level & Age) plot your relationship with movement
- Coin - Look at the coins date mark - Think about your age and circumstances in that year, what was your relationship with movement like then?
Schools are often the "safe space" where young people are most comfortable and feel safe, they are therefore more likely to try something new here rather than going to what could be considered a daunting environment of a new sports club.
At the end of the training staff are left with a digital resource on their phone with many playground games, many needing no equipment.
Impact
This project has had many benefits. It has helped us to form relationships with schools who had not engaged in School Games before.
Once in the school we have been able to facilitate conversations with staff who had little or no awareness of what the School Games is.
We allowed the workforce to use their own reflection on their relationship with movement. This has ensured that the opportunities provided in schools not only create meaning, value and joy to the young people participating, but those delivering the opportunities would feel confident and motivated to provide these experiences too.
Challenges
I have been delivering training to schools on 60 active minutes for a number of years, but I was starting to notice that leading with the language around minutes and sport was sometimes presenting me with challenges before I had even got into the school to deliver the training.
This was sometimes particularly noticeable amongst the midday supervisors, who didn’t always see this as their role and questioned their suitability and confidence to deliver or facilitate opportunities for physical activity.
However, when I started the conversation with them through the angle of their own physical literacy - their relationship with movement - the barriers started to lift. They started to understand that positive early experiences are crucial and therefore the activities that they were creating needed to be active, fun and enjoyable.
Questions we raised were:
- What movement and physical activity did you enjoy doing at school?
- What is your relationship with movement and how has this changed throughout your life?
- How could you draw on some of what gave/gives you meaning, value and joy to support the young people in your school to engage in physical activity?
The outcome of this approach resulted in the midday staff becoming more excited and motivated to deliver the games that they had enjoyed themselves as young people. It also allowed them to recognise the importance of ensuring that each opportunity is a positive experience - not just allowing the young person to move, but to also learn, feel and connect.
This approach quickly had a ripple effect, with schools recognising that reflecting on a personal physical literacy story wasn’t only beneficial to the midday supervisors. Schools requested training where all staff were encouraged to reflect on their relationship with movement, and how this could support positive experiences of physical activity and movement for young people in their school.
Sustainability
We have now worked with 11 schools, over 100 members of staff and potentially having a lasting impact on over 2,000 young people. There are many more schools who have not yet had this training, we will continue to target the disengaged schools as well as offering the training for the engaged schools who have not yet accessed the training.
At the end of the training staff are left with a digital resource on their phone with many playground games, many with no equipment.
Top tips
Top tips
If speaking with SLT, talk about active learners being better learners.
Midday supervisors, talk about how more activity will help improve behavior (give them the 20 minutes back at the end of lunch where they have to speak to the class teacher about incidents).
Importantly to all: If you asked them to write the top 5 qualities that young people had when they leave school. Most if not all would list confidence and happy. We know that active students consider themselves happier and more confident than their inactive peers. (Data from surveys conducted by Sheffield hallam university.