The importance of activity and the importance of Europe

Sport is part of any positive and healthy life style. Children should be encouraged to take part in sports from an early age to guarantee their healthy physical and mental development. Sport has also been proven to have additional effects on education processes. It helps children to develop their own identity, self-confidence and democratic abilities by introducing them to ambition and competitiveness as well as fairness, cooperation and solidarity in dealing with others. Sport is seen as a means against violence and as acting to support international understanding. This is why the European committees consider sport to be a vital part of our lives. Traditionally, it has played an important part in the education and culture of all Europeans. Only very few activities are as decisive for social integration in Europe.(Kuhlmann)

Educating people to take part in sports does not, however, automatically bring about education through sport. Sport inherently has its own potential for aggression and violence, since it teaches people to ambitiously improve their individual performance. Competition between nations carries a danger of deepening the rifts between them, rather than encouraging friendship and understanding. All sports activities should therefore be embedded in an educational framework, in order to bring about the educational processes and effects which are so desirable. This will not work without regional networking, i.e. cooperation between schools and clubs, day care centres for teenagers, etc. and without everyone overcoming all national borders. For many Europeans, Europe is still no more than an abstract idea. It can be filled with life by personal contacts and encounters between children and teenagers from European neighbours. Europe can be strengthened by playing and experiencing sports together.

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Implementation of our campaign

To take part in our competition "Time of activity", pupils everywhere will need the help and support of their teachers, especially

  • when seeking regional and European partners and attempting to create successful cooperation between partners
  • when collecting and documenting individual and total times of activity
  • when implementing special activities or campaigns.

The most important aspect of support will be the proposal of activities that fit the needs of the teenagers, and which will therefore encourage physical activity in as many young people as possible.

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Special Activities Programme

Teachers, together with the whole school, can support the competition by offering what we call a "Special Activities Programme", proposing additional times of activity wherever possible, e.g.:

All pupils could be asked to invent "Sports for the classroom", e.g.:

  • Aiming and throwing paper balls at waste paper baskets,
  • jumping over school bags,
  • climbing over a chair while balancing a maths book on their heads, etc.

In each lesson, one of these ideas could be put into practice.

  • Every sports lesson could start with 5 minutes of extra activity, pupils choosing balls, skipping ropes, etc. and inventing their own type of activity. This only works if everyone is active and nobody disturbs anyone else.
  • The weekly schedule should contain at least one "activity task" per week, e.g. "Take off your shoes and, using your feet, try to take everything out of your pencil case and put it back in."
  • The teacher supervising the school yard organises and supervises ball games or other activities during longer breaks.
    (You will find some ideas under Hints for more activities for breaks and lessons)
  • Being active can also be part of homework: "While you are doing your homework, do 5 knee-bends every 10 minutes. How many knee-bends did you do in total?"

With the support of parents, the afternoons can also become more active. Why not go on a bicycle tour, or run in the park, or swim in the local swimming pool?

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Activities for breaks and lessons

This competition will hopefully provide an incentive to think about the "activity" level of your own lessons. Hopefully, we will all manage to make school a more active place for the future.

Inactive lives do not only lead to problems with motor activity, postural deformities and other health troubles, they also have negative effects on learning and the general ability to perform. Schools have already become more active places since the 1990s, especially with the introduction of "daily times of activity" in German primary schools, the transformation of concrete school yards into playgrounds and similar projects in secondary schools. The German "Conference of Ministers for Culture" published a report in 2001 on the status quo of the so-called "activity-friendly" school. The report states that "Activity, games and sports should not only be part of a particular subject at school, they should become part of everyday life and learning at school". There is still a long way to go to achieve this goal. Schools still have a tendency to react rather therapeutically to one-off cases of inactivity, introducing "special measures" only for the individual pupils concerned. Holistic approaches and integrated activity concepts for all pupils are still extremely rare.

Activity in schools still only really exists in the context of sports lessons, and is left in the capable hands of sports teachers. But even in sports lessons, pupils are not actually very active. A study by the Freie Universität Berlin measured the effective times of activity of 11,000 children. According to this study, children are active for little more than 7 minutes per hour in a single sports lesson. And, in 2 hours, the percentage is even less: just under 12 minutes!

School, on the whole, is now less restraining than it used to be, but the children's diverse physical needs and impulses are not properly taken care of. One can assume that the lessons themselves often involuntarily add to the general restlessness and aggression of the pupils, which teachers seem to complain about so much. A day at school should offer both hard work and relaxation, both inactivity and activity. Children learn by "grasping". Physical and tactile experiences should be a fundamental element of learning. That is why traditional lessons, with everyone sitting down, should be replaced by a type of learning that requires the body to move more actively. "Grasping" also includes active movement. It involves living and learning together at school, during breaks and lessons, in English, Maths, Social Studies, Physics, foreign language classes, Arts or Music - there is nothing the pupils could not be moved by.

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Hints for more activities for breaks and lessons

Activities

Activities for breaks
Break time should be there to counter-act the time spent sitting down during lessons. Children need opportunities to run, play, move and relax. The whole school premises should be seen and recreated as space to move around in - including interior rooms and spaces. This sort of transformation, e.g. the re-surfacing and landscaping of school yards takes money, staff and time. The following suggestions can be implemented without having to spend too much time and money. Certain campaigns have allowed some schools to buy games and playground equipment at special, reduced rates. It would be ideal to include the pupils in the whole process - from the decision about which measures are taken to the actual implementation, the supervision of the work, and the process of tidying up afterwards. Children and teenagers need not only be moved, they should also move themselves!

  • In any school yard, there should be separate areas for calm play and active sports, so that active games can be undertaken at any time, without interruption.
  • There should be a schedule regulating times when groups or classes can use the play room.
  • Each class should have a box with toys (balls, skipping ropes, chalk, etc.).
  • A teacher should help with, and supervise, active games during break times.

Even when the weather is bad, children and teenagers need to run around during break-time.

  • Why not open the school's gymnasium during breaks for children to run around in? The teachers could take turns in initiating and supervising activities, e.g. basketball on Mondays, skateboarding on Tuesdays, football on Wednesdays, skipping rope games on Thursdays, juggling on Fridays.
  • A party could be organised in the entrance hall. Pupils can play their own music and do some dancing.
  • For activities in the classroom and in the corridors, there will be a toy box with table tennis balls and rackets, plastic tenpins, hula hoops, balloons, etc.
  • Everyone can invent and take part in activities and games, e.g.:

Table tennis
Two desks are moved together, with a little gap remaining in between. This makes a perfect table for table tennis, either played with a racket or with bare hands. If the ball ends up in the gap, you lose a point.

Hockey
The equipment consists of a broom, a cloth and a chair. The players try to shoot the cloth underneath the chair, using the broom as a hockey stick. The person who manages it with the least number of attempts wins. You can also build teams and have them play against each other.

Trigon
(You will find the rules under "Country information: Italy: Exciting sports news")


Activities for lessons: miniature games for any occasion


Relaxation

Reaching for the stars
Everyone stands behind their chairs and tries to "reach for the stars". Stretch the left arm up first, then the right one. Repeat several times. Afterwards, shake out both arms.

Baking pizza
The children find a partner. One child sits down, astride a chair. The other one stands behind him or her and "bakes pizza". A baker explains the recipe:
"First, you knead the dough well." (Massage the back.)
"Flatten the dough." (Tap the back with your flat hands.)
"Carefully use a fork to make small holes in the dough to keep it flat." (Use your fingers to softly prick the back.)
"Now you pull up the sides of the dough, so that the topping won't fall off." (Carefully mould the sides of the back, as if you wanted to form an edge.)
"Now you brush tomato sauce on the dough." (Brush the back with your hands.)
"Now you put salami on the pizza." (Describe several circles on the back.)
"Now you place the pizza in the warm oven." (Rub your hands against each other until they are warm and place them on the other person's back. Leave them there for a while.)
"The pizza is ready." (Slowly take away your hands.)
Then, let the children swap roles.

Lifting yourself off the chair
The pupils hold the edges of their chair seat with both hands and lift themselves up with their arms. While hovering above the seat, they breathe in and out, deeply, several times. They then lower themselves back onto the chair, relax for a little while, and then repeat the exercise twice.


Concentration

Two things at the same time
To do two different movements at the same time takes quite a lot of concentration, e.g.:

  • hopping on one leg while tapping yourself on the forehead with the left hand,
  • nodding your head while tapping your fingers on the table,
  • waving with your left hand while describing a circle with your right hand.

The pupils will probably come up with further ideas.

The opposite reaction
The teacher touches his or her forehead and says: "This is my tummy." The children have to do the opposite: touch their tummy and say: "This is my forehead." etc.

Greet your knee with your hand
The children get up. The teacher gives directions like:
Touch your left shoulder with your right hand, then your left knee, your left foot, your bottom, etc. This exercise can also be done in pairs. One child "greets" the other one's knee with his or her hand, etc.

 

Activities for lessons: subject-related examples

English

"Walking" dictation
The dictation text is placed on different desks within the classroom. The children have to leave their desk, read one sentence and remember it, then go back, dictate the sentence to themselves, get up again, etc., until they have written down the whole text.

Getting to know idiomatic expressions
The class collects idiomatic expressions and discusses their meaning. Expressions that can be explained through movement will be described using pantomime, e.g. "to drive someone round the bend", "to pull someone's leg", "to dig in one's heels", etc. Ask the European partner schools whether they have the same, or similar, expressions.

Verbs
Explain the different parts of speech and make sure everyone knows them well. Use verbs as examples which describe some kind of movement. The pupils will write down the verbs and also experience them through movement. This method is also very useful for teaching foreign languages or to create "European dictionaries" about movement.


Maths

Starting to learn numbers
The children walk around the room. After a while, the teacher says, e.g.: "Five frogs jump." The children have to form groups of five, take each other by the hand and jump like frogs. The rest of the children, who cannot form a group of five, chant their number while jumping, e.g.: "Only 2 frogs." This small group helps the teacher to decide the task for the next round, e.g.: "Three storks jump on one leg."

Mental arithmetic
The children need a soft ball. They are sitting in a circle. One of them asks the others a simple maths question and throws the ball to someone, who has to answer the question. If they don't know the answer, they can pass the ball to another child.
(Also a good method to try out and/or test new vocabulary.)

Measurements
The children can familiarise themselves with measuring units through physical exercises:
The pupils measure the distance they can jump. They measure the duration of an activity, e.g. 10 knee-bends. They weigh different objects which they can all throw into a waste paper basket from a distance of 1 metre. This method of movement, while measuring distances, time and weight, works even better in combination with physical exercises on the sports field.

Measuring instruments
The children measure their step length.
My step is about ______ metres long.
Then they fulfil different tasks and write the results down:

I measured this with ...
of my steps.		 For this, I did...
so many steps.		 This is...
so many metres long.
     
     

Foreign languages

Reading comprehension
The pupils take part in a "school quiz". They get their instructions ("Go to the teacher's room. Do 5 forward bends before entering, etc.") in the foreign language that they are learning. Control points make sure they do what they were asked to do.

Introduction to the English lexical field "body" for German pupils
There is a little activity song which we use:
"Head and shoulders":
Head and shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes,
head and shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes,
ears and eyes and mouth and nose,
head and shoulders, knees and toes, knees and toes.
(aus Kienzler, J. / Kumpf, G.: Lieder im Englischunterricht der Unterstufe.
In: Praxis Schule Heft 3, Juni 1997, S.52 ff.)
The children are sitting on chairs in a circle. The teacher calls out the body parts in the song. The children repeat them after the teacher. Then they sing and play the song together (there are further verses and new ones can be made up). The children touch every body part when it is mentioned. You can increase the speed with each repetition.

Science and Biology

Build flying objects
The children build paper `planes, Frisbees, kites, etc. and try them out.


Pulse and heartbeat
The pupils learn about their pulse and how to measure it. They learn that their pulse rate changes every time they move. Let them try it out: they measure their own rest pulse, walk or run for 30 seconds, and then measure their pulse again. This exercise should be repeated at different walking and/or running speeds. The pupils write down their pulse rates, compare them amongst each other, and discuss them. The exercise can also be repeated using different movements, like knee-bends, climbing stairs, etc.


Music

Movement improvisations with music
The children "experience" different pieces of music through free movement improvisations.

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Encourage parents to take part

Projects with children and teenagers will only work in cooperation with their parents. Communication with the parents is vital to achieve their cooperation. In conversation with the parents, you will be able to pass on information, explain the importance of education through sport, smooth out any problems the children may have, awaken their enthusiasm for the project, organise their active help and support, and gather and develop ideas for collective activities such as a parent-teacher sports conference.

Primary schools should organise a parent-teacher-conference to answer all questions the parents might want to ask. Team partners, such as sports clubs, should also be invited. Secondary schools can send all the necessary information to the parents by letter. Whether you organise a parent-teacher-conference or send out letters, the subject remains the same:

You should keep the parents up to date on all current activities. Use any opportunity to involve the parents in the projects. If you want children and teenagers to experience fun, personal enrichment and improved social skills, they will need their parents' support.

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