Focus on Physical Education

PE & Sports Report

This term has been a busy term for sports and PE. 

Mini Olympics

To kick things off, I would like to spotlight Sadie Crane, PE captain, and all the PE committee members who organised and ran a Mini Olympics for the Foundation students last Friday. There was no grand opening ceremony, however thank you to the generosity of an FPS family, Sadie was able to bring along an Olympic torch from the Athens Olympics. This  wowed the students, as well as at least one PE teacher. Great work to the Grade  6 students who made the Mini Olympics a lot of fun for the Foundation students.

What’s Happening in PE

Time to have a look at what is happening in PE. The Foundation – Year 3 students have been using elastics to help warm up and coordinate their bodies at the beginning of PE lessons. They have learnt a couple of chants used when playing elastics as well as some of the different jumps, such as on, in, out or over. Elastics also creates some great jumping pictures, check them out. 

Another skill the Foundation – Year 2s are working on is the fundamental movement skill of kicking in both AFL and Soccer. The Year 3 and 4s are working on passing skills and basic strategies used in invasion games.

Exciting times for the Grade 6 students who on a Friday afternoon are busy practising for their term 3 interschool sports, Newcombe ball, Spikeball and Ultimate Frisbee. The gala day for these sports is on Friday 23 August and parent helpers are still required to assist with this event. If you can help out, please sign up here, no experience required. 

During PE, Grade 6 students are focusing on badminton. Badminton is a unique sport due to the use of shuttlecocks whose flight is different to that of a ball, therefore students can find the tracking/timing of their strikes to be a fun challenge.

Coincidently the Grade 5 students are also practising Badminton as their alternative sport for term 3. This is taking place on Friday afternoons and is being run by an external instructor. In PE the Grade 5s are playing sports with modified rules. Students are having discussions about why some rules have been modified and how modified rules can change the game.

Athletics Carnival & More!

In addition to weekly PE lessons, the Foundation to Year 2 Learn to Swim Program, AND term 3 sports – I need to acknowledge all those students who represented Fairfield at the Northcote District Athletics Carnival last week. 46 students attended this event and performed amazingly well with 26 students qualifying for the Northcote Division Athletics event happening on Thursday 12 September at Meadowglen Athletics Track.

One final shout out, two of our Grade 6 winter sports teams – mixed netball and mixed soccer – qualified to the division finals which took place earlier this term. These teams played against some strong opposition and enjoyed the experience and hopefully learnt a lot as well.

~ Geoff McShane, PE & Sports Teacher