Active Flag
We are delighted to have been awarded our first Active School Flag in May 2023.
The Active School Flag (ASF) initiative is a Department of Education and Skills initiative (DES) supported by Healthy Ireland (HI) which aims to get more schools, more active, more often. It ties in with all the work we do all year long on healthy living, such as being active, exercising, and taking care of our bodies and minds. It is awarded to schools that strive to achieve a physically educated and physically active school community.Visit this page for additional details about the Active Schools Initiative. https://activeschoolflag.ie
Active Home Work Menu
We have created an Active Homework menu for children to choose activities for our Active June summer month. We hope it helps all our families get active and have fun together. See menu: Active Homework Menu
Physical Education
Please click the links below for more information on the physical activity plans for our school:
Scoilnet – Move Well Move Often
This year as part of our Active School Flag renewal, we will focus on Orienteering. We’ll provide lots of update on the various activities and events here and on Twitter @StRaphaelas – so check back for more information.
Physical Activity
To promote physical activity in the school, we have introduced a number of initiatives to ensure our pupils are encouraged to be as active as possible.
We are very lucky at St Raphaelas to have access to a hockey pitch, basketball court and 2 fields beside our school to avail of. We regularly use all and the pupils really enjoy getting out for exercise and fresh air on brain breaks.
Some of the active initiatives we have introduced include:
- Safe skipping areas in our yard during break times. This is run by our playground leaders twice a week.
- An Active School Walkway in the school grounds that is clearly signposted for our pupils to follow.
- Active Break Challenges on rainy days that include ‘Go Noodle’, ‘Just Dance’, ‘The Body Coach’ and ’10@10′.
- We have our ‘Run a K a Day’ challenge for four weeks spread throughout the year. This involves running laps of the various the school yards and is a wonderful initiative that all children can participate in.
- We regularly use the neighbouring fields for nature walks and ‘fresh air’ walks.
- In conjunction with our Green Schools team, we take regular walks around the school proximity ensuring litter is managed.
See our Month of May Activities for 2023:
May-2023-Active-School-Calendar-1
Active Schools Partnerships
At St Raphaelas’ we work with lots of different partners to deliver our programme of physical activities to pupils.
Please see below our current partners 2023:
- The Cycling Safety School (funded by An Taisce)
- Basketball
- Kilmacud Crokes GAA
- Cricket
We also offer after-school sporting activities including soccer, camogie, Gaelic football, athletics, basketball and cycling.
Active Schools Month
Active School Week in St Raphaelas NS took place throughout the month of May and we had lots of extra fun activities and challenges to celebrate. During the month, we asked every class to complete 3 Energiser Challenges including Run Around Ireland, Climb the heights and Active Dance. Active homework was incorporated and there were extra yoga classes, playground games and a tug of war. Thank you to Mr Fox and all our teachers for setting extra challenges during the month. During Active School Month we continued our usual activities like PE, cycling, Run a K a Day, the 10 @ 10 and Drop Everything and Dance. We hold a MegaMix Active Day as an annual fundraiser each year and we also have a whole school Sports Day annually which all students, parents and teachers enjoy!
Thank you to all the parents and guardians who took the time to complete our survey and offer their feedback on the PE curriculum and various activities offered at St Raphaelas. We also want to say a big thank you to all our parents and guardians for their amazing support and engagement with Active Month 2023. It was incredible to see our pupils taking part in so many activities – and having so much fun.
St Raphaelas NS is committed to promoting physical activity in our school and we are hopeful to receive our first Active Flag. Please note regular updates are shared on Twitter @StRaphaelasns
Our Aim:
As a School our overall objective is to create an environment and opportunities so that children within our care complete 60 minutes of activity every day!
To launch our campaign, we asked all our pupils to get involved and create a poster and slogan that can be used throughout the school, the participation from the pupils was outstanding.
Our Active School slogan was created by Sofia W. , Senior Infants
‘Move your feet…. make your heart beat’
Our Active School Poster was created by Laura M., Sixth Class