ON FRIDAY June 11 at Lee Valley Athletics Centre, 24 Playing for Success (PfS) educational centres from the London and South East Region took part in a mini-games competition which involved over 200 year 6 pupils. The event offered young people from across the region the opportunity to meet pupils from other centres and to participate in a range of Olympic sporting and academic events at this fantastic athletics venue.
Each PFS centre was given a country to represent and all students dressed up, adorned flags and brought instruments and props to really get into the Olympic spirit of their designated nation. Leyton Orient PFS had representatives from Mayville Primary in Leytonstone, and Thomas Gamuel Primary and Mission Grove Primary in Walthamstow and were representing Team Australia.
Playing For Success currently has it's own national Inspiremark project called 'Pass It On' whereby pupils take part in yearly competitions and the 7 Olympic or Paralympic values are passed on amongst the 9 regions for PFS centres to focus on. This term, London is focusing on Courage and the South East, Paralympic Heroes. In a workshop run by the Inspiremark project Supporter2Reporter they came up with a question about their value and were taught how to use recording equipment to collect Vox-Pops on their Olympic value, showing some excellent media skills!
Other workshops included using the Get Set website to explore the Paralympic and Olympic values. PFS centres were encouraged to sign up to the Get Set network, alongside Leyton Orient, the first centre in this region to join, and be given the Education Logo for their centre. There was also a London 2012 Quiz, Krypton factor Tangrams and an Olympic spelling quiz.
As well as different track and field events, pupils took part in the target throw, speedstacking, even Paralympic events, the sitting throw and a blindfolded obstacle course.
Of course the emphasis was on taking part rather than winning and every country received their medals on the winners podium, awarded by Leyton based Jeanette Kwakye, 100m finalist in the Beijing Olympics in 2008. In an interview with our very own S2RLeyton Reporter Jeanette said:
"Events like this really inspired to me to take up the sport, when I was their age. I loved the whole sports day, running and competing against other schools. It was what made me start and I kept going from there. Events like today help kids to love sport, whatever sport it may be, they can get experience, make new friends and show team bonding and teamwork."
So that competition was not just reserved for the pupils, the club mascots took part in a 100m race at lunch time. Crystal Palace FC's Pete the Eagle came first, followed by Cambridge Utd's Marvin the Moose, with Harlequins RC's Harley in third place.
With government funding for the Playing For Success programme only secure until March 2011, it is the hope of everyone involved with PfS that the initiative continues to receive financial backing and the 162 centres across Great Britain can continue to benefit pupils who are in need of educational and emotional support.
For more information please contact Andree Selner, LOCSP Senior Education Development Officer on 020 8556 5973 or email andree.selner@locsp.org
To see the work of the young reporters at Leyton Orient - visit this link:
http://www.radiowaves.co.uk/story/141647/title/MiniOlympicsPlayingforSucessS2RReports
