As soon as we knew Sports Day was going to be missed this year, the PE team at Chelmer Valley High School were really keen to try and do something to replace it. We build our Sports Day as big whole school events, so we felt it was important we still maintained this, especially as the older years would miss their 'Final Sports Day'.

We felt that by offering daily challenges during the week of 15th July when our original Sports Day was planned, would be the best way to keep the students involved. With the house system in school, we wanted to still be able to have a sports day winner as we would have done from a traditional Sports Day and award the Sports Cup trophy as normal.

Daily challenges were set (simple ones that everyone could do at home with no specialist equipment, etc.; we wanted everyone to be able to do them.) Every day a google form was sent out along with the challenge, where the student could fill in their score and their house. Then the next day, the current scores, once collected were sent out with the new challenge encouraging the students to take part but also encouraging their peers to score points for their houses. 

We also sent it to all the staff to take part as well and some of them really got on board, especially some of the tutors who have tried to motivate their tutor groups, some even videoing too!

We made all the challenges individual, so there were no concerns regarding distancing and all of them could be completed at home. Each day a member of the PE team performed the challenge on video and this was sent to the students by 9am to watch and then replicate. They had 12 hours to record a score. Challenges included Speed bounce, Throwing socks into a container(3m away), chair squats, ball coordination figure of 8, all in a 1 minute time frame and finally the last day involved a fancy dress relay.

Mr Wareham, Head of PE said, “I have a great and enthusiastic PE team whose ideas and videos have helped motivate the students and as we have encouraged videos and photos to be sent in, they were put on the school’s PE twitter page, promoting everyone getting involved, which I think helped. I think the students have really enjoyed the challenges, given the number of students and staff that have participated and it has been a great way to stay connected with them through physical activity. Thank you to all the staff and students who participated and who sent in their photos and videos.”

It was close all week but Rutherford sealed victory overall with their older tutor groups contributing more than their rivals. Please see below for individual year group results.