A school’s innovative app is certainly fitting the bill for lock-down home fitness.
Silverton Primary School in Noble Park North developed the app to encourage students to “get outside” and do different physical activities during remote learning, PE teacher Mark Blundell said.
“We wanted to encourage students to get up and away from their computers.”
The app offers cardio activities such as dancing, jumping and skipping, or training sessions for basketball, soccer, cricket, netball and Australian Rules.
It also pitted students in healthily competitive challenges with their peers – and even a virtual cross-country race.
“We were able to align our school curriculum to the remote learning environment. Our virtual cross-country is one great example of this,” Mr Blundell said.
“Children were encouraged to keep active and run over a specific two-week period, with each run contributing to School House points.”
One of the participants was student Gianluca.
“The games where really enjoyable and I’m glad Mr Blundell created the app because it definitely gave me ideas on what physical activities I could do,” Gianluna said.
“My favourite activity is the ‘Find my 60’. It definitely gives me motivation to exercise for 60 minutes or more.”
The app has been lauded by the Healthy Schools Achievement Program, a partnership of the State Government and Cancer Council Victoria.
Head of the achievement program, Tope Adepoyibi, was impressed with the creative way Silverton Primary School adapted to remote learning.
“I was blown away by how quickly the school created an app that has positively impacted the whole school community.
“With remote learning making it more challenging for some children to keep active, this tool is a great option to promote physical activity.”
