This week 20 of our Physical Activity Leaders (PALs) took part in some professional development.

On Thursday 14 March,  20 of the Physical Activity Leaders (PALs) from Oaklands took part in a training day at the Lincoln Events Centre. The training was run by experts from Sport Canterbury. 

The students took part in 4 workshops. These were focussed on 4 key areas, namely; designing a game, adapting a game, managing a game and developing a PALs vision for Oaklands. 

Motivation, energy and enthusiasm levels were very high and the students gave their all to every workshop. It was humbling to get very positive feedback from all of the instructors on how well our group conducted themselves and how enthusiastically they approached the day.

We will  build on the momentum that we have gained at this training and further develop our PALs programme at school. The rest of the PALs will be filled in on new knowledge gained and we will be teaching some cool new games to everyone. 

Thanks to our awesome parents ( Toni, Katy, Michelle and Lizzy) for transporting us to and from the event. We simply could not do these things with out you and we  appreciate your continued support. 

Read what some of the students thought about the training day below:

Marshall: I enjoyed today because they had fun games and exercises. The training was good as I learnt about teamwork, communication, new games and ideas. I’m going to enjoy teaching the new games at PALs. The challenging part was making the rules for the games. Thanks Mr Muller for taking us :)

Micah: Me and some others headed off to the PALs leadership training hosted by Sport Canterbury on Thursday. I got a lot out of it and I really enjoyed it a ton. One of my favorite activities was design your own game because me, Marshall and Taylor made a new game. We had a blast playing it and teaching it to the others.

Joey: It was fun playing different games but my favorite was “design a game”

Oli: I enjoyed my day out learning how to be a great leader in our school. I can't wait to make more fun games up. I liked learning how to make a new game from an original game and make unique. Thank you Mr Muller for giving us this opportunity. 

Hannah: I enjoyed the PALs training because we got to play games and activities at the same time as being taught how to be a good leader. I liked designing a new game that I will be able to come back teach to people.

Taylor: I enjoyed PALs training because we learnt lots of games that we can play here at school. It was also fun because we got to play games as well. My favourite activity was make your own game because Me, Marshall, Micah, Felix and Luca made up a awesome game called Oaklands Rules. In the end I think it was a great opportunity for the PALs to learn more games and lots of other things. 

Matthew: I enjoyed learning about how to design a game and learning how many rules are should be in a game.