Every Move Counts

The project “Every move counts” was initiated as we see that a majority of our students spend a lot of their free time using electronic recreation and less and less time being physically active. The number of students who practise sport as a regular free time activity is decreasing constantly. It is clear that regular physical activity plays an important role for the foundation of a happy, healthy and longer life whereas inactivity brings dangers such as heart disease, diabetes and obesity. This is, of course, not only our personal impressions but various studies show that a high percentage of students’ physical functional capacity (endurance, speed, strength, mobility, balance, basic motor skills) is far from good. For example, in Finland 5th and 8th grade students are checked for their physical performance for their national Move! Programme and only one third of students reach level good.

Apart from that, at all our schools, we have students who aren’t integrated socially for different reasons (language, behavioural, mental problems) and we find that sport is a good way to access and integrate this group of students. School is a really good place to tackle all those problems as it is the only time in a lifespan where everyone can be introduced to physical skills and activities. Six schools from six countries take part in this project: Croatia, Finland, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK. Our participants are aged between 13 – 16 and attend different forms of secondary and primary schools and one SEN school. We are going to take about 125 students on LTTAs but many more people are going to be involved in our project through challenges, European sports week, eTwinning projects and healthy food days at all schools. So the number of students involved will exceed several hundred. Students at our schools come from all sorts of social backgrounds, we have a lot of students with low school performance. Our UK partner is a SEN school with students with various difficulties (physical and mental)

Our project’s main objective is increasing our students’ participation in sports and other active leisure pursuits, which will bring by many positive effects. In addition, our students are going to learn how a healthy diet, physical activity and personal well-being are connected and will perceive that physical activity can bring them enjoyment and thus they will continue being active.

Besides, students facing exclusion will be integrated through our activities as they will give them opportunities to connect, boost their self-esteem and make them feel accepted. We will adjust our activities so that students with different abilities will be able to take part successfully and feel well. 

Many activities will focus on our students being active and learning with all senses but we will also activities where students get some theoretical background about the connection of physical activity and health. Our students are going to be involved in the planning and implementation of our activities and are thus going to learn and improve many competences, particularly the personal, social and learning to learn competence. They will enjoy the physical activities because they are student centred, fun and safe and using different learning methods. Our competitions will be considerate of their needs so that they are motivating and fun. 

We are going to prioritise the LOVE of sport above LEARNING sport so that they become healthy active adults. That is one of the long term results we want to achieve: healthy active human beings, who know how important it is to live healthily and actively and who are well integrated into society.