Barry Comprehensive School

Barry Comprehensive School ’s recent Healthy Living Week was a resounding success, with students from all year groups getting involved in a range of activities to promote healthy eating, healthy bodies and healthy minds.

Thanks to generous donations of fresh fruit from Tesco, the canteen was able to offer a delicious range of smoothies and other healthy treats to tempt students to try something new. School councillors – acting as Healthy Living Ambassadors for the week – were on hand to award those students who made healthy eating choices with stamps for their Healthy Living Logs.

Welsh Baccalaureate students (with help from Miss Allen, Miss Lewis and some enthusiastic Year 7 and 8 students) ran a fruit tuck shop for the week and had to stock up several times to keep up with the large demand! They also provided an ordering and delivery service to provide fruit and vegetable boxes for students, staff and parents and made a healthy profit, despite selling the produce at discounted prices.

Miss S. Morgan and Mr W. Jones – along with invaluable support from Year 10 and 11 students – undertook the daunting task of training the whole of Year 7 in ‘Heartstart’ emergency life saving skills. The students had great fun learning the serious skills of performing CPR, although they definitely needed to work on their renditions of ‘Nellie the Elephant’ which helped them to time their chest compressions!

We were very grateful for outside help too: The Samaritans and the Vale DVPS gave up their time to come and work with a range of classes to focus on ways of managing negative feelings; the humanities faculty ran an Asylum Seekers Awareness day for Year 9 with visiting speakers helping to dispel myths and prejudices; healthy bodies were encouraged as specialist karate and trampoline coaching replaced lessons for some lucky Year 8 students and our 5x60 officer, Ben Williams, held dodgeball tournaments for the whole of Year 7 and Year 9, with even reluctant athletes unable to resist joining in!

Of course, even with the week over the healthy living doesn’t stop there and hopefully students will continue their healthy habits. Those who participated in the ‘Walk to School Week’ and made an excellent effort to keep their Healthy Living Logs over half term can now look forward to a swimming trip as a reward.