Being Active has countless forms: The ActiveCdale Cup 2019

The ActiveCdale cup is a friendly competition between the primary schools of Calderdale, the objective is to be the most active, in the greatest variety of ways.

The 2019 competition was held on social media, with schools throughout the borough taking part by submitting images and videos of all of the unique ways that they stay active throughout the day.

Daily Mile

Background

The education system has influence over a range of people in Calderdale; it has a direct impact on the children in schools, but also on their parents, and on the vast numbers of staff that the education sector employs.

This project was put in place to get schools thinking about different types of activity beyond the daily mile and to educate students on the different forms that physical activity can take.

This focus on physical activity, and in particular the focus on diversity, could then rub off on the staff and parents, which was encouraged through daily challenges focusing on teachers, staff and parents to get them involved.

Active Parents

The process

To ensure as many forms of physical activity as possible, and to ensure maximum participation, the competition needed to be as simple as possible. As such it the “post the most” entry mechanism was devised. Tweet the most times about different types of physical activity to win – it’s as simple as that. All tweets included hashtag "Activecdale", and were added to a tally accordingly. Other social media options were available, but 99% of the entries were through Twitter.

To build on the success of 2018, steps were taken to broaden the focus. We wanted to get everyone involved with the school active, not just the pupils, so the following daily challenges were added:

1. Monday: Most Active Pupils

2. Tuesday: Most Active Head Teacher

3. Wednesday: Most Active Staff

4. Thursday: Most Active Parents

5. Friday: Most Different Activities

These challenges were just for fun, with the “winner” receiving a shout out from the @activecdale twitter account.

Active Teachers

The outcome

There were around 350 uses of the competition hashtag between 11th-15th of March. These posts showed huge variety in exercise, from class based games, to running, playtime, gardening, interactive games, sport and more.

We also saw, dancing, planks, football, active travel and more from staff and parents.

Tweets from the @ActiveCdale account across the week gained 12.7k impressions, with 612 engagements. The total reach of the competition can’t be determined, but will be substantially higher.

Would you like to see more of the entries? We compiled them into twitter moments:

1. Day 1

2. Day 2

3. Day 3

4. Day 4

5. Day 5

Active Travel from a Headteacher

The next steps

The ActiveCdale cup will be back in 2020 – we’ll be looking to add more schools, more challenges and more physical activity wherever we can!