Down Teachers In-Service Day

The Down DENI coaches recently held a teacher’s in-service day on Tuesday 27th March 2012 in two venues across Down. The teachers involved got back to basics with a full days training that included traditional warm ups, family of games and the new curriculum lessons that are being tested for the very first time in the schools.

For many teachers being involved in the actual lessons instead of observing them in the school environment really brought the whole PE lesson to life. After a brief introduction the morning session included the traditional warm ups of pathways, directions, speeds and levels. We also included fun tag games like toilet tag, bridges and rivers, etc. We also progressed the warm ups to challenge the children and how to include balancing, mobilisation, and strength work as part of a warm up. After break the teachers went through a series of games including Fill the Empty Corner, Tower Ball, Over the River, Rotate the Defender, and Captains Ball. The teachers were shown how to make these games harder or easier and how to develop movement on and off the ball.

Speaking after the event Cara Fegan Carrick Primary School, Burren said, “Thanks so much for the great day of fun and learning!! It was very helpful and worthwhile. It provided me with a clear outline to a PE lesson, warm up, skills and activities and games for a range of sports. In particular ways these can be progressed. The types of skills were highlighted, ABC’s, kicking, throwing, rolling, fisting, attacking and defending. The boys shown effective ways to use facilities, equipment and resources. Ways to amend a PE lesson to suit the needs of your class were identified e.g. time at a game or the size of the area being played.”

In the afternoon the teachers were then shown a range of practical elements of how PE can be linked to literacy, numeracy, and the world around us. We used PE to reinforce curricular skills in a practical and fun element where the children were having fun and improving their number work or spellings, etc.

In total there were 30 teachers across both venues and the Down DENI coaches would like to thank all teachers who came and participated on the day and made it so worthwhile for both the coaches and the teachers involved.