Kiwi Swim Safe and Greater Auckland Aquatic Action Plan

Auckland schools who are part of the Greater Auckland Aquatic Action Plan (GAAAP) project are up skilling their staff with the Kiwi Swim Safe Programme. This enables the students to receive the most out of their time swimming with GAAAP and increases teachers’ confidence around aquatics.

The GAAAP is a collaborative project that coordinates professionally delivered swimming lessons to primary school children in the greater Auckland region, ensuring the development of fundamental swimming and water safety skills. GAAAP targets schools in deciles 1 to 6 and children in years 3 to 6.

Teachers from Arahoe School, Helensville School and Lincoln Heights School recently attended a professional development workshop with Swimming New Zealand. The Kiwi Swim Safe programme is about increasing teacher’s confidence in instructing swimming from poolside and introducing curriculum friendly classroom sessions based around aquatics.

The teachers from Arahoe School enjoyed being assisted on poolside at their school pool. Teachers from Helensville School used their new knowledge to assist swim instructors at the local pool. Lincoln Heights School are putting what they have learnt into use while their school has a portable pool this term.

Arahoe School had some great feedback when Alannah was assisting on poolside;

• Alannah was really helpful. I learnt some new games to play with the children and fast ways of assessing them.

• I loved how she worked with where we were at; she helped us form our groups for the rest of the term. She gave me some ideas for starting points for the groups.
  Great to work with, I was very happy.

• Alannah was so patient with our children. I'm sure they were the most lively of all the classes! I liked how she grouped the children and got them working in the different areas of the pool. The best part was the way she taught the children to get in and out of the pool over the edge.  

• Very age appropriate (new entrant) Great repertoire of games specifically for learning intention/outcome.

Most of these schools were lucky enough to have Koru the Kiwi visit this month at their assemblies. The children had a ball and Koru was able to reinforce the water safety messages the children learnt from the lessons both in the pool and in the classroom.