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
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),
As many of you will already know Coosan NS is participating in the Health Promoting Schools initiative and we have focused on Nutrition as our main theme to date. We will be maintaining our focus on healthy eating from September onwards and we will be conducting surveys in our classrooms to maintain and to improve on the healthy gains that we made last year. This will have a very positive impact on our commitment to ensuring that our lunchboxes are as healthy as can be.
In order to assist parents and children make healthy choices when packing their lunches we have provided the following information below:
The Department of Health have launched the recent Healthy Food for Life toolkit which includes a new Food Pyramid and guidance materials to help people makes choices to maintain a healthy, balanced diet. This guidance applies for everyone from 5 years of age upwards.
The three key messages are:
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Limit high fat, sugar and salt foods from the top shelf of the Pyramid to no more than once or twice a week.
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Eat more fruit and vegetables, at least 5 to 7 servings a day.
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Use the Pyramid as a guide for serving sizes and remember that portion size matters.
The new Food Pyramid and further information can be found at www.healthyireland.ie under the Healthy Eating Guidelines tab http://www.healthyireland.ie/health-initiatives/heg/
As well as maintaining our focus on healthy eating Coosan NS is also 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. We hope to get our new theme up and running very soon and we will be informing our school community of these developments.
The HPS Working Group would like to thank everyone for their support to date and wish all in Coosan NS an even healthier school year for 2017/2018.
As well as maintaining our focus on healthy eating, Coosan NS has also decided to create awareness around the area of mental health as a further theme in our Health Promoting School’s initiative. The HPS Working Group held a meeting with Michele Baker (Health Promoting Unit – HSE) on the 26th of October and Ms. Baker agreed that mental health was an excellent health promoting theme to work on.
Our Working Group have decided to create positive mental health awareness in our school by focusing on the subtheme of ‘Gratitude.’ Our teachers are facilitating this awareness by enabling our children to develop ideas and to make their own personal contributions on the topic of ‘Gratitude.’ All of our children will be completing different activities to achieve this:
‘I am Thankful’ art work.
Gratitude cards for our Gratitude Tree.
Gratitude jars have been distributed to different classrooms.
Gratitude journals – which children can fill in anonymously.
A focus on the words ‘gratitude, grateful, thankful, appreciation,’ for the months of November and December.
We also have a Gratitude Tree beside the office. Many children have already placed cards here expressing appreciation for different things in their lives. All members of our school community are most welcome to have a look at our Gratitude Tree and indeed to make their own contribution if they so wish.
HPS - Year 1/2
Huge thank you to this years surveyors from Ms. Brophys Class!
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.