Samuel Lucas JMI School
“The Daily Mile has opened conversations about teamwork, respect and resilience”
Fact File
Where we’re based: Hertfordshire, England
Roll: 420
Our Daily Mile Story
We have been participating in The Daily Mile for the past 2 years. We discovered the initiative through social media and conversations with other local schools and decided to introduce it in our school at the start of that particular academic year. We have been taking part ever since!
Each class teacher decides where and when they do their Daily Mile in school. If it is dry we make use of the field and if the weather is wetter the classes tend to run around the playground – our EYFS and Year 1 classes also take advantage of a running track that is marked on their playground area.
The two main barriers we found when we began The Daily Mile were time restraints and finding a way to engage children that perhaps don’t have a natural enthusiasm for sport or physical activity. As time has progressed our staff have found a variety of ways to manage where and when they take their children out for The Daily Mile and have been very encouraging with children who perhaps don’t engage as much in physical activity. Setting small achievable targets in terms of laps or number of minutes we can run for has really helped.
Not only has The Daily Mile improved the fitness, stamina and general wellbeing of our children, I think teachers value it as an opportunity to take a short break from learning and sitting in the classroom. This gives children the chance to perhaps burn off some excess energy and remove that restless feeling that can occur sometimes. The opportunity to let the children run in the fresh air so they are re-energised and know that they have had that ‘brain boost’ when they return to class is something that works very well in our school. The introduction of The Daily Mile Destinations has been a very timely during a very strange period for all of us. We certainly weren’t sure how much our children had engaged in physical activity during lockdown and for us to be able to almost relaunch The Daily Mile in school, it now feels like there is a great enthusiasm for children wanting to take part in their Daily Mile run.
We decided to use this opportunity with The Daily Mile Destinations being launched to find a way that we could engage every single class in the school. We are a two-form entry school so that’s 14 classes in total. We decided that a display in our gallery would be the one place that all the children will pass through during the day. Every class has a class passport around the central poster and they attach a flag to it every time they pass a country. We have also made each class a marker so they can visually see their progress and how they are doing in comparison to other classes. It has opened conversations about teamwork, respect and resilience. The children are now frequently asking their teachers “when are we going to do the daily mile?”.
Our site manager Mr.McAdam has been inspired to join in and have his own marker! He decided that being as he is walking around school from 6am – 6pm that he would start tracking his steps and converting it into miles so that he can see how far he can travel around the world too.