The Active Flag is awarded to schools who endeavour to achieve a physically active and physically educated school community. The initiative aims to promote ‘more schools to become more active, more often’.

With the help, hard work and dedication of the teachers, parents, students and wider community, St Tiarnach’s Primary School was officially recognised as an ‘Active School’ in 2016. The school was awarded and praised for its inclusive nature and extremely talented and diligent pupils. We are currently striving to achieve our third award with the ongoing encouragement and support of a truly energetic staff.

To facilitate winning this award an Active School’s Committee, comprised of both pupils and teachers is usually established, however due to Covid this year we had to rely on each class to select two Active Assistants to help drive the Active Schools activities within their class. They have been responsible for initiating activities, keeping their class on track with their Active targets and recording activities and laps completed. Last year our Active School Week became Active Home Week as we were remote learning during this time. During this week the staff of St.Tiarnach’s provided lots of fun, active homework for the children. There were teacher challenges, exercise videos from our local GAA players, online dance activities from Go Noodle and Cosmic Yoga, athletics challenges from Múinteoir Ciara and Clones Athletics Club and challenges set by our own GAA star Múinteoir Anita. We created a wonderful collage of Active Home Week pictures on our return in September. This year our Active Schools Week will take place in May with some coaches being provided by Monaghan County Partnership, plenty of cross curricular trails on our newly signed Active Walkway and Challenge videos provided by our local second level school, Largy College. There will be lots of fun and inclusive physical opportunities for all members of the school community.

Additionally many activities are undertaken each and every week in St. Tiarnach’s to ensure that our pupils lead and maintain healthy and physically active lives both inside and outside of the classroom. With statistics showing that ‘four out of five children in the Republic of Ireland are still not getting enough exercise posing serious risks to their overall health and well-being’, at St. Tiarnach’s, we can say that we are doing our bit for the health and well-being of each and every pupil in our care.

As an Active School we

• Provide all children with appropriate Physical Education provision and ensure that our P.E. plan is contemporary and comprehensive.
• Advocate the integration of P.E with other curriculum subjects and ensure the appropriate differentiation of P.E. for the inclusivity of ALL students regardless of ability levels.
• Promote Physical Activity during break times and encourage the use of our highly inclusive playground equipment.
• Provide our students with various physical activities throughout the day with ‘Bizzy Breaks’, ‘Cosmic Yoga’, ‘Go Noodle’ and ‘Just Dance’ encouraging the children to become active practitioners from their own classrooms.
• Provide weekly active homework for all our pupils.
• Reduce sedentary time in our classrooms by engaging in three active initiatives in each of our classrooms.
• Engage in frequent active/movement breaks throughout the day.
• Use our Active Walkway on a daily basis for running, walking and cross curricular activities.
• Encourage the upskilling of our staff members to ensure new methodologies and ideas are implemented during P.E. instruction.

Above are some drone pictures taken on the 26th of April for the opening of our new Active Schools walkway around our school 🙂