Starting on Monday, 19 January schools can take on the Active Break Every Day challenge!
The GAA have teamed up with the Active School Flag programme and Healthy Ireland for this initiative - running from 19 January to 13 February. It is open to Primary, Post-Primary and special schools.
Teachers are provided with a suite of short, classroom-based movement break videos in English and Irish. A different set of videos will be released each week across the four weeks of the challenge, all filmed around Croke Park.
How to take part
The Croke Park Movement Breaks videos will get everyone moving and learning too - watch the promo up top and check it out as Gaeilge here.
Classes will get a behind-the-scenes look at where the team buses arrive, inside the players' dressing rooms and the warm-up areas where legends get game ready. Plus, they will learn interesting facts about Croke Park
and Min Hildegarde Naughton TD at the launch with some young participants. Pic: Sam Barnes/ Sportsfile
Minister for Education and Youth, Hildegarde Naughton, and Minister of State for Public Health and Well-being, Jennifer Murnane O'Connor, are calling on Primary, Post-Primary and special schools to sign up to take part.
Minister Naughton said: "The Active Schools Flag programme has been a key initiative for over 15 years in supporting school communities to become more physically active. Initiatives such as the 'Active Break Every Day' challenge are fun and inclusive and can help us to develop positive habits around moving more and sitting less.
"It is fantastic that the GAA have joined with ourselves and the Department of Health to help develop a challenge that will capture the imagination of our pupils, students and teachers and create lots of opportunities for activity, joy and friendship in our classrooms at this time of year. The movement break videos include lots of interesting facts, supporting the integration of physical activity with teaching and learning."
Uachtarán Chumann Lúthchleas Gael Jarlath Burns said: "The GAA's collaboration with education goes back to our very foundation when we were established by a teacher in Michael Cusack, and for the last 141 years we have worked successfully together to enrich the lives of generations of Irish people.
"These Croke Park Activity Breaks provide today’s teachers with an opportunity to nurture children in their physical and mental wellbeing and also culturally, in terms of passing on an interest in our national games and in using the iconic setting of Croke Park to do so. I wish to commend the Ministers and Departments of Education and Health on this partnership with our Games Development Department and on the novel approach to bringing sport and exercise into the classroom."
Active Schools
The Active School Flag programme is a collaboration between the Department of Education and Youth and the Department of Health and is designed to complement the existing Physical Education and Wellbeing curriculum in schools. This year's 'Active Break Every Day challenge’ is also supported by the GAA.
And check out RTÉ Learn for free resources and initatives for the classroom.
