Cranmore Sports News February 2021

SPORTS NEWS From Director of Sport Paul Hodgson There was superb engagement and a huge amount of activity last half-term from pupils through our Remote Learning provisions. This included Mr Cox’s weekly shuttlecock challenge, Mr Jenkin’s football skills, step-by-step juggling tutorial, Mr Hodgson’s rugby skills, weekly HIIT sessions, strength movement patterns and ‘Cranmore creatures’.

The big event that took place in the upper part of the school was the ‘Cranmore Class Distance Challenge’. Pupils input their weekly individual metres that they completed to contribute to their class totals. Walking, jogging, and running all counted, with classes competing within their own Year groups as well as against the rest in the Upper Prep and Senior School. The distances were plotted on a UK map to see if classes could reach the 10 chosen stadiums and sporting arenas. Many of the 14 classes in the Upper Prep and Senior school reached all 10, so 2 more stadiums across Europe were added. The engagement and enthusiasm for this challenge was absolutely superb with many pupils completing huge distances each week. Every class did very well with the top 5 being shown.

16th NOVEMBER 2020

FEBRUARY

The penultimate week of the half-term saw a virtual fixture take place between Cranmore and Rokeby school.

The challenge set was a series of exercises with pupils having to complete as many reps as they could. Each exercise lasted one minute and there were five exercises in total. The scoring had three categories: 1) how many pupils participated in total (engagement) 2) average scores for each exercise 3) Cranmore top performers compared with Rokeby top performers. Every Year group from Y4 to Y8 performed superbly well, with excellent engagement and impressive scores. I am pleased to say that on this occasion, Cranmore came out on top in this fixture!

This second half-term has seen the start of two new individual challenges ‘Cranmore to 5km’ and ‘1km for time’.

Pupils are keeping active and working hard to try and get their names on the ‘Wall of Fame’. Ms Moore’s hockey skills, Mr Jenkins football skills, Mr Cox’s weekly exercise and movement courses are just some of the other activities and challenges the pupils have been participating in.

Finally, it was great to see such enthusiasm from everyone who joined our first virtual HIIT and strength Movement club.

Mr Hodgson

Photos showing pupils’ rugby skills.

Skills in football, juggling, virtual fixture and HIIT class!

Photos below showing pupils learning football skills.

Photos of pupils juggling, right.

Hockey

Photos of pupils taking part in the Virtual Fixture— and a screen shot of Mr Hodgson’s HIIT session, below.

Class Distance Challenge!

Pupils taking part in the class distance challenge!

Lower Prep Sport and Daily Mile Challenge!

February Newsletter Lower Prep

The sport in the Lower Prep department has been in full swing since the start of the term. Even though the pupils have not been on site, they have still been extremely busy. They have taken part in HIIT sessions, Mindfulness, Weekly Activities, ‘Cranmore Creatures’, Tennis Ball Skills, One Minute Movements, Cranmore Olympics, PE Bingo, Rugby skills and let us not forget the Staircase Challenge and the Daily Mile Challenge!

Pupils have been following a weekly programme of sport, where each activity will help them develop as a sportsperson.

For example, the Tennis Ball Progressive Skill will improve hand eye coordination and, on our return to school, this will help all pupils when we start the Cricket season.

The ‘Cranmore Creatures’ is a concept of physical literacy which is the ability to move with confidence and competence in a wide range of activities and it helps pupil’s progression.

We also have the ‘One Minute Movements’, this activity is to help the pupils to take regular movement breaks throughout their day. With the pupils on their screen a lot, we came up with the idea of the One Minute Movements. This is a single movement which they can do with little to no equipment, for example the speed bounce. Pupils would do this movement for one minute, when they feel the need for a movement break between lessons, or in the morning, or in the afternoon. Having these breaks will help them with their concentration and engagement in lessons and they are also lots of fun!

Here at Cranmore, we love a challenge and from the first week back to school in January to February half term we had the Staircase Challenge. Pupils were to climb their stairs daily and count how many steps up they did. We had so many responses and as a Lower Prep Department you did over 400,000 steps up your steps, which is equivalent to climbing Mount Everest nearly seven times! Five classes in the Lower Prep reached the height of Mount Everest which stands at an amazing 58,000 steps high.

Some pupils would do over 1000 steps up their stairs a day, which is a fantastic effort. The class who did the most steps were 3MP who managed to reach 75,963 steps and the other classes were not far behind.

Of course, we could not start another half term without another challenge, so we are now doing the Daily Mile.

Every day, if the pupils can, we would like them to either walk, run, cycle a mile (of course with a parent or guardian). The aim of this challenge is to get everyone outside, away from their screens and to do some exercise in the fresh air. We would like to see which class can get the most pupils in their class to do the daily mile challenge. So far, we have had lots of pupils doing their daily mile which is great to see.

Hopefully the March newsletter will see the pupils returning to school and doing all their sports outside in lovely spring weather.

Ms Moore

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