Sport Events

Title of the event:

Testing of results under the Not Only Fair Play project in Bulgaria

Date of the event:

19 May 2016

Place of the event:

Vidin, Bulgaria

Aims of the event:

• Awareness on the importance of sport at school
• Sport as a tool for social inclusion
• An ethical approach to sport
• All types of sports at school

Description of the event:

The event was organized at the premises of the professional high school “Prof. Dr. Asen Zlatarov”. It was a whole day event with various sport activities. On the one hand there were “leisure games” aiming at attracting not so physically active participants – unmotivated students, general teachers, parents. The organizers focused on the element of fun of these activities. These games were rope pulling, sack running, running clover (4 people running together holding hands behind their backs, board walking (also popular as giant footstep) – walking together in teams of 3 with feet on boards; boards held with ropes.

On the other hand there were sport games with pure competitive character, which involved professional young athletes, PE teachers, but also students not so interested in sports. These games were volleyball games, basketball games, footballs games, handball games, tennis.

In total 105 people took part in the initiative: 32 teachers, 12 parents, 61 students.

The games were organized in such a way that project outputs to be tested.

In the organization of the leisure games the following toolkits were used:

• Sports as means of social inclusion;
• Promotion of less popular sports;
• Motivation of students who are not usually involved in physical activates;
• Promoting an ethical approach in sport.

With the organization of leisure games we emphasised on the creation of an inclusive environment and family sports opportunities (See “Sport as a Mean of Social Inclusion, Including Communication Strategies with Parents”, A Toolkit for Physical Education Teacher). Together with teachers we thought that leisure games could be a good instrument for promotion of physical activity in general and less popular games in particular. For the involvement of more participants the PE teachers worked together with the teachers of other subjects, for them together to address parents and involve them in the sport initiative (See “How to Promote Less Popular Sports”, A Toolkit for Physical Education Teacher).

In order to motivate students, who are usually not so active in sports we chose to involve them in sports, which are popular, not too difficult to play for a beginner (football, volleyball, basketball) and gave them appropriate tasks – we built teams consisting of young sportspeople and of amateurs, playing not crucial but yet important positions in order to help their teams win (See “How to Motivate Students Who Are Not Usually Involved In Physical Education Activities”, A Toolkit for Physical Education Teacher).

A very important part of the event was the testing of the toolkit, focused on ethical approach in sports. We organized a handball game between rival school teams, asking the coaches and PE teachers involved in the games to have special sessions with the teams’ members on ethics and sportsmanship (See Promotion of an ethical approach to sport, A Toolkit for Physical Education Teacher).

Even if the main toolkits used during the sport events were the ones targeting PE teachers, the other toolkits targeted at another subject teachers and headmasters were taken into consideration in the process of organizing the initiative. During the workshop with teachers the importance of sport, its integration in the school curriculum, organization of interdisciplinary activities gathered the greatest interest and no doubt it is the main reason for so many non PE teachers to take part in the initiative too. We hope this initiative will also help teachers to work in a better way with their colleagues, who teach PE.

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