It has been a very athletic start to the year for Health and Physical Education classes right across the school.
The Prep students enjoyed motor skills development at the CAB, utilising some great obstacle courses to develop their running, jumping, balancing, hopping, problem solving and teamwork skills.
The Year 1 to Year 3 classes participated in Learn to Swim lessons, while the Year 4 to Year 6 students advanced their stroke development for freestyle, backstroke, and breaststroke, with the occasional water game to develop teamwork skills.
Year 7 and 8 classes had a blast learning all things lifesaving. From developing their survival strokes and treading water skills, to demonstrating contact and non-contact rescues, and developing strategies for safe spinal turns and team lifts using the spinal board; they really learnt it all. With their practical unit, Year 7 students developed coping strategies to deal with stress and their new high school workload in the Mental Health unit, while Year 8 students learnt about the dangers of drugs.
Year 9 classes participated in water polo and developed a range of team strategies and individual skills to progress in the sport. This practical work was coupled with analysing participation barriers in water polo using Figueroa’s Framework. For a lot of students this was their first exposure to water polo and, while it is quite a taxing game, the girls really seemed to love it. Fingers crossed we get a few of these students push themselves further and sign up for interschool water polo in Term 4.
Year 10 students investigated sport biomechanics and analysed their freestyle performance. After identifying their weaknesses, they created a training program to improve their technique and, after weeks of hard training (and many laps later), they did a great job at evaluating their improvements. I feel like the highlight of the unit was watching all the 'fails' and bloopers on the video camera, from belly flop dives to tumble turns that got stuck upside down, it definitely provided some laughs.
The Senior PE class developed motor learning and tactical strategies for badminton. Thanks to our new multipurpose court, the girls got to experience a sport that many had never played before. They learnt very quickly that badminton is a sport that requires great reaction time and perceptive abilities, high levels of agility and speed, and a killer tactical game plan to see success. Most importantly, rivals came and rivals went, but Mrs Doherty remained on top!
Greta Doherty
Director of Sport