Coosan National School
Castlequarter, Coosan, Athlone, Co. Westmeath.
Telephone/Fax: (090) 6478356
Email: coosanns@gmail.com









HEALTH PROMOTING SCHOOLS
Our HPS flag ceremony was due to take place on Thursday the 11th of October. Unfortunately this had to be cancelled due to adverse weather conditions.
We hope to reschedule this as soon as possible when we are settled in to our new school! We will keep you all updated! Thank you for all your support thus far!
Our Healthiest Junior class for December was Ms. Curran's senior Infant Class!! Well done!!


Our Healthiest Senior class for December was Mr. Ronaldson's 6th Class!! Well done!!


HPS - Year 2/3


Huge thank you to this years surveyors from Ms. Brophys Class!










Our school has decided to proceed with the Health Promoting Schools programme. The ultimate aim of this process is to ensure that Coosan NS becomes a Health Promoting School.
A Health Promoting School is one in which the whole school community comes together to promote the health of everyone. In order to develop as a Health Promoting School we will have to establish and maintain policies, practices and programmes that promote health over a sustained period of time. We will develop and focus on a number of different themes as the HPS process develops in our school.
At this initial stage we have decided to work on the area of nutrition and healthy eating.
As part of this scheme, a Health Promoting Schools working group has been formed.
This group comprises of parents, staff, pupils and Health Promotion (Health Service Executive) staff.
Our HPS Working Group is comprised of the following members:
HSE Coordinator: Michele Baker.
Parents Rep: Mrs. Brenda Scullion.
Principal: Mr. Flahive.
Teachers: Mr. Kenny, Ms. Waterstone, Ms. McDonagh, Ms. Thompson.
Pupils: Ruby Daly (5th class), Emma McManus, (6th class), Liam Rowan (6th class),
HPS - Year 1/2




We had a HPS Working Group meeting on February 1st last which was attended by Michele Baker from the Health Promotion Unit of the HSE. Michele was delighted with the progress made to date with our healthy eating initiative
and she informed the meeting that Coosan NS is ready to move onto its next health promoting theme. Our working group has decided to focus on the theme of Mental Health and we will be implementing new activities, lessons etc. which promote mental health for everyone in our school.
Results of our May lunchbox survey.
We conducted another lunchbox survey on Monday the 29th of May 2017. We surveyed 344 children in our 15 classes. We were very happy with the information that we obtained as we are maintaining our healthy eating standards since our last survey. We will compare our findings with our last audit below.
The Main Findings of our Survey
Healthy Options:
1. Sandwiches/wraps – 86% down from 88%.
2. Fruit – 83% down from 85%.
3. Dairy – 39% up from 36%.
4. Vegetables – 8% up from 6%.
Unhealthy Options:
1. Sweet treat – 13% down from 14%.
2. Chocolate spread – 0% down from 1%.
3. Popcorn/crisps – Still at 0%.
Some children also had the following foods for their lunches:
Fruit bar, ham/meat, crackers, rice cakes, biscuits, cereal bar, raisins, bread sticks, scone, smoothie, sausages, jelly, pancake, pasta, cheerios, waffle, granola, noodles, banana bread, cous cous.
Conclusion:
The children in Coosan NS are consistently maintaining good standards in their lunches.
Our unhealthy options have decreased. Once again there were no crisps or popcorn. Chocolate spread is still at 0%. Sweet treats have fallen from 14% to 13%. We are still striving for sweet treat consumption to fall to a lower level for days Monday to Friday.
The HPS committee would like to thank everyone for all of the recent improvements made to our healthy eating initiative.




Healthy Eating:
We are continuing to concentrate on ‘Healthy Lunches.’ Children are encouraged to bring a healthy lunch and drink to school each day. One small treat is allowed every Friday.
We would like to remind parents that yoghurts/frubes etc. are allowed from First class to Sixth class only. As part of our ‘Reduce, re-use, recycle’ initiative, children bring home all uneaten food and wrappers in their lunch boxes. Thank you for your co-operation.