PE and Health Kahu ako Meeting

Yesterday afternoon (28 August) I meet with the heads of Pe and Health from Gore High, West Gore and Matuara Primary. The purpose of the meeting was to share what each school was doing for their PE programmes so that we can better streamline our programmes through the different levels.

We shared our longterm plans. I have a few ideas for Longford's long term plans and want to start doing things on a better cycle. This probably has happened in the past, but seems to have fallen by the way side since I took over the roll. I also want to start a Google site with PE plans and activities clearly on it. (Something I may look to do over the holidays)

We also discussed reporting against the PE and Health curriculum and how hard it is, and wondered if it would be better to report for PE and Health using the Key Competencies. I will ask around other schools and see how they report. They don't have standards to report against until NZCA.

There was also discussion around how long we do PE and Health for each week. Gore High year 9's are timetabled in for 2 1 hour sessions, and 1 hour of health a week. They were pleased that we are doing 2 45 minute sessions timetabled here at Longford.

It was interesting as all schools are looking at Sexuality/puberty in Health at the moment.

Some take home points I have from yesterdays meeting is:

• We are on the right track here at Longford
• I need to sort out a cycling longterm plan of when we do PE activities
• I need to look at swimming and see if we can do water safety
• Cross country - We are the only school that it was optional for - this will need to change next year West Gore struggled with some of their learners with other siblings at Longford
• Look at creating a Google site with all PE information.

Well-being in the Health and PE Curriculum

Last week I was fortunate enough to go a PLD session on Well-being, which was run by Susannah Steven from the UC child well-being institute. (9 August 2019)

She was fantastic in that everything she shared with us was evidence based. I took several things away from this PLD day.

The first was that feeling good - the presense of contentment, happiness and feeling like you are able to engage with life and functioning well - feeling of being in control, maintaining positive relationships, being satisfied and having a sense of purpose need to be run at the same time. You can not build up one, without having the other.

She talked a lot a bout the state of well-being being a process. This in turn should be changing how we view the health curriculum here at school. Health should be viewed in a holistic sense, it is not just the physiological body. If we view health holistically it will change the way it looks in the community.

Susannah also referred lots to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. We can not expect greatness from our students if the basic needs are not being meet.

I was thinking about out Health and PE programme and thought about how we can best use the subject area to increase our students well-being, and what changes we can make to address this.