Healthy Lifestyle for St Coleman's

Specialist School Connecting the Learning Collaborative Project for J1-“Healthy Lifestyles”

As part of our specialist school plan St Colman’s college have once again embarked on an exciting venture with all Year 8 students taking part in a collaborative learning project.

The project ran over 3 days with some prior preparation in class. We saw it as an opportunity for our pupils to participate in a fun and active project during the last week of term.

The theme of the project was “Healthy Lifestyles”. Each group took part in the following activities;

• Design and make a fresh fruit salad.

• Carry out physical activities to determine your heart rate during exercise.

• Create a role-play on the effects of poor health.

• Create a poster outlining scientific facts about different aspects of physical and spiritual health.

• Create a power point incorporating music suited to the theme and include images /facts on health and a photo of participation in the three activities.

There were many opportunities for connected learning with PE/HE in the designing and carrying out of physical/healthy eating activities, music in incorporating the health themes, English/literacy with research of dietary facts and figures etc and of course the use of ICT in creating power points, all with a scientific theme.

We did not make assessment a priority, however there were opportunities for the students to work on these skills throughout the project and teachers of the various subject strands made good use of the many opportunities for Assessment for learning throughout the course of the extended project. The awards ceremony was an ideal occasion to celebrate pupils’ efforts and initiative whilst promoting the importance of team work and self evaluation.

Pupils and teachers reviewed all of the completed tasks discussing effective aspects of their work and areas for future improvements In evaluating the project both pupils and teachers thoroughly enjoyed the three days with many of the boys commenting on how much fun they had and in particular they enjoyed the opportunity to work with and meet people outside of their normal class.

The teachers were very impressed with the skills and knowledge of the pupils and we in St Colman’s are looking forward to working on more exciting events in the future as part of our vision as a specialist school. Pictured is Fr Brown President of the College with the various prize winners from Year 8.