The Healthy Schools Project at UCLan

Our second and third year sport studies students have been in the mist of the healthy schools project through March and April. This project has been set up by Sports Lecturer Christoper Neil Gunn and is designed to encourage school children to play sport and be active in line with sporting England strategies. It gives the children opportunity's to take part in sports that are new to them and also traditional ones for example, Frisbee, tag rugby orienteering and hand ball as the whole concept is to give them something new that they can then take with them to their schools.

We use the Sport centre here on campus as well as the arena and visit the schools for this project. It gives our students a chance to plan teaching lessons and the experience of working with lots of young children from year 3 to year 9 from different schools, ethnicity's and ability levels.

Second year students learn teaching and support with planning sessions and the variety of sports and environments that they are teaching in. Third year students gain opportunity to liaise with the schools and give observational feedback to the second year students. They get to manage the day which provides them experience with sport business management for marketing and PR.

One parent of a child from Euxton St Mary's primary school said "It's a good experience for the kids to be involved in with the university and they get one on one coaching with the students here. It also gets the kids out of the classroom and they get to enjoy some of the experiences of UCLan."

These days give students from UCLan experience working with young children and also gives the school children a good day here at UCLan.

After a successful day we received this email from a teacher from Preston Girls Muslim School saying "Thanks for all your hard work setting up the sports day inside at such a short notice and thank your team for their hard work, the year 7's loved it and had a really great day and cant wait to come back next year."

We look forward to carrying on this project and getting students and schools together in a positive way with thanks to all the staff and students who took part.