30 schools from across the Wirral School Sport Partnerships are currently using the Pocket Fit animal cards as part of the Active Lifestyles programme which we are developing with Key Stage 1, however, the cards are being used across the whole school. The cards are being used alongside the Start to Play resources which are given to schools as part of the Active Lifestyles programme. We have used the cards with older children involved in Mend (Mind, Exercise. Nutrition. Do It) with positive feedback , and are currently working with Pocket fit to offer training to teachers to give them more confidence and ideas to use the cards in the curriuculum.

The staff feel that the cards are a fun and easy way to reinforce messages about fitness and are keen to explore further how they might be used to develop cross curricular ideas around literacy and numeracy, as well as encouraging youngsters to take up leadership roles by explaining different games that the cards can by used for, or explaining an activity or exercise, to others.

We see lots of potential for the future use of Pocketfit cards. With training and support for primary teachers and leaders we envisage the cards being used in the curriculum, as part of active play, and through circle time. For older pupils we feel that the activity cards, particularly those around core stability, will prove extremely useful to BTEC students when they are designing personal training plans and delivering circuit training sessions.

We hope to roll-out the active lifestyles programme to 30 schools per year and envisage the Pocketfit cards being a useful resource to recommend to schools both for teachers to use in delivering sessions and for children to use at home with their families as part of a boarder change 4 life campaign.

Again the cards are fun and easy to use so it seems only natural that youngsters will be able to pick up the cards and show others how to also use them. Lots of children love to play card games and the cards naturally lend themselves to relay style activities to complete so many sets of a particular activity or collect so many cards of the same house, whilst being physically active.