Sports
Sports and games can be used to support children and youngsters in their way to become adults, to keep up with the contemporary society and to make responsible choices. The development from child to adult is not easy; to cope with your own body and its feelings and thoughts, the development of perseverance, body knowledge, confidence and independence.... A secure and stimulating learning environment is of great value; at SISP we try to offer this to our children.
So, beside the regular classes the children are getting sports classes. Since September 2016 SISP is having its own professional physical education teacher for a 2 year project. Saskia, from The Netherlands, gives weekly sports classes for all students. In their free time (break between lessons, before / after breakfast and lunchtime), the children are free to play games and sports under supervision of their class teachers.
During the (sports-) classes, all students are involved and challenged to learn new games, play with different rules, work together and help each other. Twice a year the students will have an evaluation of their “sport skills”. It was great to see their improvement in different skills (football, cricket, volleyball, dodgeball, badminton, frisbee, sprint and their own choice of sports like rope skipping, hula hoop, skateboarding..), but they also got marks for team work, their way of participation / behaviour and their attendance. Many students have showed a real talent in one or more of the sports, in solving problems or working together in a team!
In January, February and March we have almost weekly been swimming and playing in the sea at Kovalam Hawah Beach. Sometimes with help of volunteers, but always under supervision of our (sport) teacher, class teachers and Kovalam Surf Club members. It is heartwarming to see the students excitement when we reach the beach with the school bus; the refreshing water, playing and bodyboarding in the waves.., a welcome variation to the lessons at the SISP Centre!
Before starting the activities at the beach, the students always collected at least 5 plastic items. In this way, we continued our SISP beach clean-ups and we could avoid a full bag of plastics would end up in the ocean every week!
During our Onam celebration in September, the 20 Years Anniversary of SISP in December and in one of the last school weeks before the summer holidays in May, we have had special ‘Sports Days’ / sports activities for all our SISP students. Both students and teachers where participating in mixed teams (male/female together). The aim of these days was to enjoy different (team-) games and to have (a lot of!) fun.
