Health and Physical Education

Term two’s Health and Physical Education newsletter has a focus on our year thirteen classes. In year thirteen we have one class operating in each of our areas, Health Education and Physical Education. Both of these courses have a huge academic focus and set our senior students up well for success at university or other further education. Some areas that it can be particularly beneficial for are; the health sector, personal training, teaching, social working and any other career that involves leadership.

This term our year thirteen health education class has been focusing on a New Zealand health issue. For the most part our students have chosen to focus their research and report around the rising issue of methamphetamine use within New Zealand. They could have also looked at other drug use, alcohol use or poverty within New Zealand. This assessment sets them up well for their external exam which focuses on a worldwide health issue. Last term we focused on an ethical issue that is relevant to New Zealand - Euthenasia. In term three our focus shifts to looking into New Zealand health practices and preparing for the external exam.

During term two our year thirteen physical education class has been focusing on risk management in the outdoors. We have been looking at the OPC disaster in 2008 and have been analysing what risks were involved and what ultimately went wrong. The students will then be tasked with developing their own risk management procedures for a trip and will be required to come up with mitigation factors for this. In the practical side of the course we have been looking at leadership this term and how we can effectively lead a group. Earlier in the year the students completed a performance based assessment around badminton and looked at why people stay active during their lives. Next term sees the students have an opportunity to show their skills while playing korfball and we will look into an issue within professional sports, most likely looking at drug doping in high performance athletes.

As always we have a lot going on and our students are rising to the challenges that year thirteen health and physical education brings along with the other pressures around. Next term's newsletter will look at our level two programme.