Student’s Opinion

Hi, we are Molly’s 5th class from Adamstown Castle Educate Together National School. There are 27 of us in 5th class. We all really enjoyed the research project over the last few months.

The project focused on including student voices in PE. In our PE lessons, we got a choice of what warm-up we wanted to do. When we did gymnastics, there was always a free station where we could practice whatever skill we wanted to. Sometimes we got a choice of the main part of the lesson, this was our favourite part during this research project. It made us feel like we got to choose what we did for this part of the day which made us really happy. It made us look forward to our PE lessons.

Before this project, we didn’t really get a choice in what we did for PE. In other subjects like maths, we always got a choice between different activities or using different things like whiteboards or copies so it was nice to experience this in PE. Next year, we would like it if our teacher did this too. It is important because it makes PE more exciting and enjoyable for us and interesting to learn.

If we were to do it again we would like to choose what strands we completed in order. So if we were given a choice between games and gymnastics, we would like to choose which one we do first.

Once a month we think it would be a good idea, if we were in groups and got to lead a PE lesson for our classmates. We would like to choose the activity. We think it’s a good thing for students to have a choice and share their voice, so we can share our ideas to our teacher and classmates. It makes learning more enjoyable when we can do that.

Teacher

I thoroughly enjoyed part-taking in the Grow in Voice research project. Reflecting on my own teaching journey, student choice and student voice is something that I value highly, yet I could never recall a time in which I used it in PE. It worked extremely well for my class and the children got used to it very quickly. They all looked forward to PE more often as they could not wait to choose their warm-up or cool-down activity. If I had more time I would have liked to introduce child-led warm-ups as mentioned by another teacher in a previous seminar.

I think it is very important for the children as it allows them to become more involved in more aspects of their learning journey. It can also make them feel more included and valued as their voice is being heard. I think the workbooks were also great as I gained an insight into the children’s thoughts, especially those who may be too shy to voice their opinions in front of the class. I will definitely include reflective practice and group discussion through a similar format in my future PE lessons. Overall, I had an effective experience taking part in the Grow in Voice research project and I found it really made a positive impact for my PE lessons.