Case Study

Learning, health, mental wellbeing and physical fitness

Objective:

Learning, health, mental wellbeing and physical fitness

The Challenge

At Mandeville we have higher than average rates of obesity in children leaving year 6. This has been exacerbated by the impact of the pandemic. Many of our children have struggled to maintain their levels of physical fitness without the structure of school physical education, playtimes and our school daily run. As a school we knew we needed to prioritise health, mental wellbeing and physical fitness within our cohort but this would have to run alongside providing an academic curriculum to catch up and secure missed learning. We were looking for a way to combine our academic and our health and wellbeing needs whilst ensuring children were having fun being back at school.

Why Teach Active

At a time when staff time is more in demand than ever Teach active provided clear well thought out activities to promote our learning, physical and social needs. Combining exercise, teamwork and learning children were able to demonstrate practice and embed learning from their lessons in a fun and engaging way. Staff could reinforce current learning, check previous learning had been embedded or introduce upcoming topics in a high challenge but low threat environment.

Our Approach

As year 6 prepared to leave our school and continue their academic journey at secondary school we felt it essential that they be given the best opportunities to succeed as they moved on. With so much disruption in their final two years at Primary they seemed the ideal group to focus on for this project. Following a maths focused discussion with the year 6 teachers we identified key areas we felt the children need to secure in order to be best ready for the challenges of Year 7.

Impact

Teach Active worked brilliantly in partnership with our school curriculum to improve the fitness, knowledge and skills of our pupils. It developed critical thinking and allowed children to apply and embed their learning in unfamiliar settings. It also allowed children with low self esteem in the classroom setting to shine. The scheme has saved time and provided high quality resources for our teachers and has helped to add to our understanding of how cross curricular learning can support pupils.

It was great to see the children so focused and engaged even at the end of a hard days learning in school. The children worked hard to embed their learning through movement and I was really pleased to see improvements in communication and teamwork as well as fitness and knowledge. Games like 'Tranlation teams' and 'Team reflection' really brought out the best in our group.

James Dickinson, Assistant Head KS2

It was great fun. We don't normally do maths in our PE lessons but it was great to lay games and practice as well.

Tilli, Year 6 Pupil

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