July saw the very first Virtual School Games Festival involving 8 competitions over a 2 week period. Skill based activities for Athletics, Boccia, Cricket, Football, Gymnastics, Netball, Rounders & Tennis were set for Primary and Secondary school students to practice and then submit their efforts onto www.suffolkschoolgames.co.uk.

Over the 2 weeks, over 1,700 submissions were received from over 40 schools. Well done to all that took part, the top scorers from the primary schools were Red Oak (1^st), St Margaret's (2^nd) & Phoenix St Peter (3^rd).

We are excited to announce that a similar format will continue into the first term of the next academic year. This means that young people in Suffolk will still have the opportunity to access competitive school sport on a county level, despite the current restrictions removing the feasibility of physical competition.

Make sure to stay in touch with your local School Games Organiser to find out more in September on how your school can be involved. Contact details can be found in our last edition by clicking here.

"When the schools in the UK closed just before the national lockdown, my head teacher (Heather Madsen) and I came up with a plan to do daily Red Oak PE challenges and exercise videos to post on to our school's Facebook pages and Twitter pages. We knew that with schools, public gyms and sports centres all being closed that there was a big risk of children becoming more sedentary and obese during the Covid-19 pandemic, so we wanted to do a daily exercise video for our students to encourage them to be active and to exercise safely within their own homes. Joe Wicks was doing a national daily PE workout, however we wanted a daily exercise program which was more personal and suited to our school ethos and students so that they would still feel a connection to Red Oak even when they were exercising at home. We thought it would be more personal if the children actually saw a member of staff who they knew and connected with, demonstrating the exercises and we wanted them to see a member of staff wearing a Red Oak PE uniform to give them the impression and sense of feeling like they were still doing a PE fitness session at their school. Parents would be encouraged to comment on the Facebook links to the videos if their child did the daily workouts and then I would give those children a shout out in the following day's exercise video, the shout outs also make the videos more personal to the Red Oak children as they are hearing the names of their friends being called out in the videos on a daily basis and there is lots of personal praise and motivation given. All of the videos have been 20 minutes long and they are posted online every school day, apart from the 40th episode where I did a special '40 minute challenge!' I am currently up to episode 44, however I have promised the children that I will film a special 50 minute challenge for the 50th episode and also a 60 minute challenge for the 60th episode. All of the videos are completely free to access and they are posted on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter every school day. I try to make the videos and exercises suitable for all ages. The videos have had a great reception, with lots of our students from all Key Stages, including reception and nursery all taking part in the videos and sending in photos and videos of themselves working out to the daily sessions. We have also had photos and videos sent in of younger and older siblings and parents joining in with the sessions. Some of the families at our school have even been doing whole family daily workouts to the filmed sessions. The videos have even inspired some of our students to want to become gym instructors and they have even sent in their own homemade exercise videos which we have shared with other students online. When we heard about the Keep Moving Suffolk Campaign to get people in Suffolk fit and active safely during the lockdown, we decided to hashtag all of our videos with #KeepMovingSuffolk to support the great work that everyone at Active Suffolk and Keep Moving Suffolk was doing, we hope that the videos encourage other people beyond our school to also be active safely during the pandemic. The Sheriff of Suffolk has also been watching the daily exercise videos and she sent me a lovely and touching letter to thank us for the work that we have done to keep children in Suffolk fit and healthy during the Covid-19 pandemic. If you would like to watch any of the daily fitness videos or use them with your students or to just stay fit and healthy, you can search for them on YouTube by searching 'Mr Lee Red Oak PE' or you can follow me on Twitter where I post them daily by searching for 'Johnny Lee Red Oak' on the Twitter"