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Health and Wellbeing in Ysgol Tŷ Coch

The Recovery Curriculum and Introduction of Physical Literacy

What did you do and how did you involve the whole school?

Wellbeing is a very important part of our school, as we believe that before any good learning can take place, our pupils’ wellbeing must be in the right place first. The pandemic has had a major impact on our pupils and staff and it was important that when we returned to school from a number of lockdowns that we put wellbeing at the forefront of our curriculum. Classes completed a variety of wellbeing activities, to encourage our pupils to feel safe and to talk about their feelings surrounding Covid. One of these activities was the introduction of Physical Literacy sessions. The idea behind these was to promote daily movement breaks that focused and development of five key skills: throwing, jumping, running, balance and strength. We held a Physical Literacy Day in May 2021 to kick of our daily sessions.

How and why did you decide on this target?

With the disruption that Covid has caused, the Eco Committee thought it was important to focus on the Health and Wellbeing of pupils and staff throughout the school. We identified that we could do more physical exercise.

How has the project impacted on your school and your community?

The Recovery Curriculum worked well within the school, particularly when the pupils first returned. One activity saw some pupils create their own finger puppets and each class was given money to purchase their own class puppet. These encouraged pupils to express how they were feeling about returning to school, etc and enabled staff to develop ways to best support their class. Classes were encouraged to spend a lot of time outside and this is where the Physical Literacy sessions were incorporated. Pupils enjoyed completing a variety of physical activities covering the five areas of jumping, running, balancing, strength and throwing and this enhanced their wellbeing. Staff were given some training, which inspired and equipped them with ideas for the sessions.

How did you celebrate success and what are your next steps?

To celebrate success, each class displayed and shared some of their wellbeing activities that they completed as part of their Recovery Curriculum. Classes have also created Physical Literacy displays, which include a chart to show which pupils’ participation with activities. The

Physios then track the charts and develop targets to be completed by the whole school, such as walking to Romania.

Next steps would be to maintain the Physical Literacy sessions, as well as the Daily Mile sessions we introduced last year. Wellbeing remains at the forefront of everything we do, so this is an important element for us to continue with.

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