Once again, the pupils at Ballyconnell NS took to the basketball court to complete the Run Around Europe running initiative during the months of February and March. This whole school running challenge focuses on participation, inclusion and most of all FUN! Working together as a class, and as a school, our combined km brought us all to many of the capital cities across Europe, including Copenhagen, London and Paris!

The classes decided on which capital city they would like to visit before running laps of the basketball court, at various times of the day, for approx. 10/15 mins. Once we completed the number of laps/kilometres that it takes to reach our destinations, we ticked it off the challenge chart before picking the next destination!

Each class teacher downloaded, printed and displayed two charts in their classrooms, ‘The Challenge Chart’ and ‘The Class Progress Chart’ whilst the Active Schools Committee members were in charge of reminding their teachers about the daily running challenge as well as recording the number of laps completed each week as a whole school.

A really easy way we found of counting the laps each day was asking the children to collect a cube for every completed lap! Once the running time was complete all of the cubes were counted as the daily class total. Another way which classes explored was the use of a ‘pedometer’ / ‘click counter’ – this was very quick and useful, particularly for our very fast runners!!

 

 

Most teachers completed their laps first thing in the mornings and before/after the break & lunch times! In this way, the children appeared more energised and prepared for their learning throughout the day! We even got to go out for a few laps on World Book Day!! Have a look at the photographs to see how much fun the children had!