Health & PE update

Year 7 Swimming Program

Over the last few weeks the mainstream year 7 classes have been completing a Water Safety unit in Health and Physical Education classes. We have ferried our classes to the Geelong Aquatic Centre in Newtown which is fortunately a lovely heated pool. Specialist swim teachers have taken the students through survival strokes, rescue techniques and general survival skills responding to different emergency scenarios. The Life Saving Victoria data shows that the Geelong area has had 26 drowning deaths in the last 10 years which is the fourth highest in the state. The most alarming data that leapt out of the page to me was, ‘80% likelihood of one or more drowning deaths occurring in Geelong in any given year’. Let’s hope that the skills our students are learning or re-learning will help to reduce statistics such as these.

Year 9 Self Defence unit: 'Back Off'

Over the last few weeks all year 9 classes have been learning and refining self defence, we call this unit, ‘Back Off’. Our guest instructor, Mervyn Nelis, has taken us through ideas about keeping ourselves safe by being alert and then through a series of physical tactics we can use if someone was to attack us physically. The third and final session was a favourite, because we worked in pairs with large pads that enabled us to actually make arm and leg strikes against our ‘attackers’. The photos show our girls in action.

Ms Joy Carr HAPE teacher of 7C, 9L & 9B