Saving the Planet with MOVE

Pupils at Percy Hedley School have been practising their movement, while learning all about changes we can make to save our planet. From cleaning up our beaches, to recycling plastic and reducing our water usage, each activity linked back to using movement while learning.

This was the schools first collaboration with MOVE on a National level whilst celebrating their annual MOVE day ‘MOVE Saves the Planet!’. Other schools who follow the MOVE programme are also participating in this event across the country this June. The school who demonstrates the most movement opportunities will be gifted £500 towards therapy equipment – fingers crossed we’re in with a good chance!

The MOVE Programme is a functional activity and goal-based programme designed to teach basic functional motor skills to those with complex physical needs. So each activity including things like using hand grips to pick up litter or use fish nets, pincer grips to open and close pegs on a washing line, or gross motor skills like crawling or propelling through the jungle.

Activities also accommodated for speech and language classes, who got involved searching for each climate station on the map, working together to funnel water into a bucket, and planting pots of soil with seeds.

The engagement classes had lots of sensory elements to the programme where they interacted with nature by looking, feeling, reaching throughout all the activities. They used switches to turn on fans, looking for the fish in the sensory sea tunnel and feeling the sand when cleaning the beaches on one of the stations.

There were 11 stations around the school grounds each with a unique way to improve physical development and movement.

MOVE at Percy Hedley School has been running since September. Saving The Planet with MOVE was organised by Mary (Physiotherapist), Sophie (Occupational Therapist), and Tina (Physiotherapist), who are part of the MOVE team, with the aims to curate a fun and interesting way of moving to improve mobility.