Kaikorai Valley College has just finished the first term of its three-year Sport in Education project. Craig Reddington, lead teacher for the project, explains.
The concepts underlining our school charter and the pending re-launch of the school's vision were behind the motivation to be involved in the Sport in Education project.
The school's charter stresses the need for teachers to foster a culture built around relationships and learning. We have started implementing the various workstreams involved in the project, starting with our year 7 pupils.
This will be an area we focus on first and we will use inter-form sport to help integrate them into the school and build class spirit. T-Ball and Kiwi cricket competitions have been completed and were enjoyed by all the pupils. We will continue the competition with winter sports in term two.
Two year 9 classes have been chosen to take part in the curriculum aspect of the project. The teaching programmes in English and mathematics have been rewritten using sport as a context for learning and there is a curriculum crossover with these subjects and physical education.
Pupils have been calculating their horsepower production, have been trying to run a four-minute mile, and have participated in a mini-Olympic event. The events involved in the mini-Olympics were a mathletics event, an English event, tug of war, three-legged races and a relay event. It was very pleasing seeing the teamwork, fair play and team spirit demonstrated by all the pupils involved in this two-hour event.
Learning groups based on sports teams operate in these classes and teams compete for competition points in various classroom activities. We are seeing the pupils develop their skills in perseverance, working hard to achieve goals, having a competitive spirit and contributing to team goals.
Year 12 and 13 pupils have been involved in curriculum-aligned leadership programmes such as Sport New Zealand's ''Growing Coaches'', New Zealand Rugby League's ''Leadership through League'' and Netball South's ''Netball Coaching Module''. All the pupils involved have enjoyed increasing their coaching skills.
After training at school, the pupils have been working with children from six contributing primary schools on Tuesday afternoons. Year 13 sports leaders have also been organising lunchtime sports activities.
The whole school was involved in our 1000km Challenge and Sports Expo. This consists of a sponsored 1.5km run and then working in groups of 20 at different sports stations. This year, 24 different sports were offered, and pupils completed eight 30min sessions throughout the day. This was a very successful day where lots of pupils got to try new activities.
Following the 1000km Challenge, we ran a similar day for primary schools. A total of 450 pupils from 13 different schools came to KVC and again completed eight different 30min activities from 22 different sports. The energy and enthusiasm of all the pupils involved was impressive. Staff from KVC and many local sports bodies ran the activities.
Improving community links is another area we have been working on as part of the project. As a result of our Sports Expo, we have established links with a judo club, a table tennis club and Badminton Otago. All of these organisations provide coaching for our pupils and then utilise our facilities for their club activities. Adult fitness classes and a school holiday programme also use our facilities out of school hours.
We have also been working hard to encourage participation in school sports and have been encouraged at the number of senior pupils who are involved in the Growing Coaches programme and are coaching junior sports teams at KVC.
Involvement with the New Zealand Olympic Committee's values and Olympic Ambassador Programme is also an area we are developing with our junior pupils. The educational objective of the NZOC is to inspire young New Zealanders to live the Olympic values through sport and the celebration of the Olympic Games. A specific focus is to ensure our Olympians' stories are maximised for the benefit of our youth. The Olympic Ambassador Programme was developed to address this goal using the inspiration of Olympian role models living the Olympic values. This links in well with our school values and culture development and we are interested in utilising the values of sport inside the school.
We have just finished the first term of the three-year Sport in Education project and will continue to develop ideas and strategies that will help our pupils achieve their potential in academic, sporting and social areas.
