Kategoria: Move and Act

You were born to be a player

A Frog’s guide to mindfulness

For people who practice sport on a daily basis, as they do in our school, motivation is the vital element which pushes them forward. It is a key factor which helps them to fulfill their potential. This time we invited a psychologist from Gdansk Universityof Physical Education and Sport, Dominika Wilczyńska, who conducted a lecture for parents of young sportsmen to help them understand the complexity of motivational techniques.

Parents were told how to help their children:

  • Practice mindfulness 
  • Manage psychological pressure
  • Set achievable long-term goals 
  • Find a sense in repeating mundane drills
  • Overcome feelings of incompetence 
  • Come to terms with the failure 
  • Find and establish relation between their behavior and expected outcome 
  • Define challenges which will stretch them a little bit further than they have been stretched previously. 

All the parents taking part in the workshops found the tips useful and convenient. They asked many practical questions about positive self-talk, the role of extrinsic prize in a process of shaping motivation and specific problems such asinjury, non-selection or amotivation. 

Use sport to relieve your stress

Regular exercises cause remarkable changes to our body, our metabolism, our spirits and well being. It has a unique capacity to boost one’s stamina and rest at the same time, as it provides both stimulation and calmness. In order to promote sports each of the school prepared a dictionary of sports. Each of the team was in charge of one specific area, Italian – olympic sports, Spain – water sports, Portugal team sports and Poland – winter sports. Students had to brainstorm for terms, after that they had to design their dictionaries, find photos illustrating the disciplines, places where these sports are performed, name athletes and provide the examples of the necessary equipment. Next they swapped their dictionaries letting other students provide the words in their native languages. It allowed for collaboration, learning English words and comparing words in different languages.

The link to the dictionary:

http:// https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ibowBC-dZvTa76eLZltJO0NvOzQjkfhr/view?usp=sharing

Apart from the dictionaries students made also quizzes about sports and they played an escape room game about sport disciplines.

We also prepared the mini – biographies of our favourite athletes.

The link to the collection: https://padlet.com/tambelli_sylwia/ygkiker5qs1kyk7p

Break time!

Actually it was the pupils’ idea to prepare a set of short sport activities which can be used in mini-breaks in the middle of the lesson or as a warming up at the beginning of the lesson. The pupils, split in groups, made a list of exercises they especially enjoyed, described the procedure and performed them so that they could be photographed. They wanted to show their warm-up during the festival of Foreign Languages regularly held in our school at the beginning of spring. Because of the lockdown they weren’t able to do it so we published the photographs in one online book.

https://read.bookcreator.com/NzQwFa43UKEYO64os58ysQuzobux8pDgttigD–vSY4/pl5oWRuaRxyYZCYLIDjmIQ

Can you rollerblade?

It was the activity for the younger learners. We were dealing with the sports vocabulary and the question: ‚Can you …?’. When students learned sport disciplines by heart and they were able to use ‚Can you’ freely, I decided to split them into groups, each group drew one group of sports (street sports, water sports, team sports, etc) out of the hat and they made a set of questions about ability to do these sports. Next they went to interview their friends from other classes and older. Finally, they had to sum up all the positive answers and made posters with bar charts. It was quite a good combination of English, maths, getting familiar with other pupils, team work and designing. And it goes without saying that an impressive number of students could do the sports and probably they were quite good at them.

Sports tasks at English lessons as a part of Erasmus project

In Primary School nr 35 Gdańsk as part of one of the Erasmus + projects, I conducted lessons about sports. In both, I introduced the vocabulary of winter activities, working simultaneously with the applications Buncee (creating presentations), Quiver (augmented reality) and Flipgrid (recording short films).

In the third grade, we practiced the I like / I don’t like structure for selected winter sports:

students printed selected winter sports on printed sheets for reading the Quiver application (printout from the Quiver page)

we saw the created drawings in augmented reality with the Quiver application on the phone.

pupils in pairs practiced the constructions I like / I don’t like / Do you like?

In class zero I used Buncee presentations and we recorded a video on Flipgrid.

I prepared a presentation about winter activities. During the display in the lesson, the immersion reader application read the pronunciation of the words.

We repeated listening / reading / pronunciation several times.

I asked the children to choose and remember their favorite activity (What is your favorite winter activity?)

Children had the task to draw their favorite activity on a piece of paper.

The children presented / expressed their activity to 3 selected colleagues.

Sitting in a circle on the carpet (easier recording), after several attempts, I recorded children’s statements in the Flipgrid application. https://flipgrid.com/bd86d560

Gosia Buszman

Gosia Buszman

Anti-stress activities

As we were told, stress is everywhere. It lurks in the wings sometimes attacks suddenly, but it also motivates us to harder work, pushes us to reach our goals and sometimes helps us accomplish our tasks efficiently. It is always the matter of the appropriate attitude, ability to manage the pressure and relieve stress when it is necessary. We all need some stress-relieving activities. To make the podcast, students researched for the following information:

  • Ways to relieve stress and anxiety
  • Short term stress-relief strategies which can be done anywhere
  • Long term stress-relief strategies for lasting health
  • Positive thinking strategies
ASAPodcast Anti-stress activities

Keep the proper posture!

Do you want to feel better instantly? Do you want to feel healthier? Think better about yourself? Keep upright. What are the benefits of maintaining a good posture?

  • it contributes to a good appearance
  • it decreases the weight of some joint surfaces
  • it diminishes the stress on the ligaments holding the joints
  • it prevents the muscular pains and fatigue
  • it allows you to breathe more deeply, which gives you more oxygen
  • a good posture can make you look thinner. Poor posture can create the appearance of a pot belly.

To sum up the lecture delivered by Eliza Niedzielska, a specialist in therapeutic reabilitation, students prepared handouts reminding about maintaining the proper posture.

You can download the brochure with the leaflets here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M6FJWzP7jKb8x8VdeSn5O0VHFwKwzHHA/view?usp=sharing