Overview
Quality physical education needs to be delivered for all students. Arguably, students with a disability need to have access to physical education more than students without disability due to already diagnosed health conditions (Klein & Hollingshead, 2015). Since schools are the venues where children with and without a disability are first exposed to sport and recreation, it is important to teach them the health and social benefits an active lifestyle can bring. Para NB helps promote these health benefits and provide the necessary resources to physical education specialists such as proper equipment and education resources to create a more supportive environment in physical education for students with a physical disability.
This is a program that has a positive impact on students and school personnel with a focus on creating increased positive physical education experiences that give all students equal opportunities to develop physical literacy and learn the necessary FUNdamental movement skills to have the potential to be active for life.
As noted in the Succeeding at Home: A green paper on education in New Brunswick (2019), “Students need to have the opportunity to learn in an enriched environment from the earliest age. All young people need the opportunity to start school day well-nourished, to experience challenge and risk, and to develop resiliency through mental and physical challenges.” Through parallel sport during physical education classes, our parallel sport and recreation in schools project promotes students of all abilities develop resiliency and habit to keep them physically active through all stages of life.
Objectives
To increase partnerships between Para NB and New Brunswick schools in the development and delivery of parallel sport and recreation.
To increase the involvement of students/youth with a physical disability in physical education in schools and reduce obesity rates.
To increase the knowledge and awareness of and increase the number of schools/physical education specialists who access and use to Para NB provincial adapted Equipment Loan Service.
Instructions
This resource is intended to increase the amount of inclusive parallel sport and recreation opportunities in schools to ensure all student build the FUNdamental movement skills and physical literacy to be active for life.
Educators can access adapted equipment for their classes through Para NB’s free Equipment Loan Service. Instruction series for programming is available on paranb.ca
Key Highlights
- Increase partnerships between Para NB and schools in the delivery of parallel sport and recreation curriculum.
- Increased access to specialized and adapted equipment for schools.
- Increased school access to well maintained and repaired adapted sport and recreation equipment.
- Increased participation of all students in parallel sport and recreation activities in schools.
- Increased participation of students with a physical disability in parallel sport and recreation activities in their physical education classes.
- Reduction in obesity rate among youth with a physical disability.