What is Chester's Active Breaks?
Chester’s Active Breaks Challenge is a 7-week whole school challenge designed to increase pupils' physical activity levels during the school day.
The challenge begins on Monday 8th September and ends on Friday 24th October 2025.
The aim of this challenge is to get the whole school moving more and sitting less, with 2-3 active breaks a day, to reduce sedentary time within the school day and to provide a positive boost to the health and wellbeing of your pupils.
Prizes
Chester’s Active Breaks Challenge is kindly sponsored by Podium 4 Sport.
Overall Prize – £200 vouchers for sports equipment from Podium 4 Sport, for the 2 schools completing the 7-week challenge with the most active breaks recorded.
Weekly Trophy – Each school taking part will receive one weekly trophy to present to the winning class each week.
What’s involved?
- Register your school to take part in the challenge.
- Short online instructional video for teachers.
- Weekly Quests set a theme for the week and give pupils tips to move more and sit less.
- Classes are encouraged to complete 2-3 active breaks throughout the school day. These breaks can be found on our Chester's Active Breaks webpage once you are registered. You are provided with lesson plans and resources for each activity.
There are five types of breaks:
- Chill with Chester (relaxing breaks)
- Lively Lessons (Integrate into part of the curriculum)
- Monkey Madness (whole class games)
- Brain Breaks (Refresh the brain)
- Cardio Boosters (to get hearts pumping)
There are active breaks for the classroom, a hall or outside depending on what you are looking for.
- Classes within your school compete to be the top class of the week. Recording your Active Breaks has been simplified following the pilot of the programme. NICHS will announce the week's winner via email. The winning class will choose their prize from choices the teacher gives them, for example: extra golden time.
- Each school that completes the 7-week challenge will be in with a chance to win 2one of two £200 vouchers for sports equipment from Podium 4 Sport. The winners will be decided by the number of Active Breaks that their school has completed. In the case of a draw, the winners will be drawn from a hat.
What are the benefits?
Teachers reported from our pilot that their pupils showed:
- Improved concentration and focus;
- Improved classroom behaviour;
- Increased pupil engagement;
- Increased energy levels;
- Better mood regulation;
- Reduced restlessness;
- Reduced Stress;
- Reduced sedentary time.
What Teachers Say
The PowerPoint presentation was great to introduce the gem of knowledge for that week and it was short and to the point, so the children were engaged and listened. There was a great range of ideas for each type of break and so there was plenty to choose from and some of them fitted in with other activities we were doing, e.g. learning French and learning a new language was one of the ideas to pick from...The children really enjoyed all of the activities and as always with Chest, Heart & Stroke the quality of the resources and material was great.
The children loved hearing who had won the trophy and it was a lovely trophy and helped to motivate them and they looked forward to getting extra playtime that they had earned if they won.
The lessons were fun and engaging and the children really loved them!
Chester’s Active Breaks - Building on our C-SLAMM Research Study
We awarded funding in 2017-18 to a team at Ulster University to modify and test a successful Australian primary school programme, C-SLAMM (Children sit less and move more). The study aimed to get 7-9-year-old pupils to be more active in their classrooms and spend less time sitting.
It incorporated activity into everyday class lessons in primary schools across Northern Ireland by using standing desks and standing activity stations around the classroom as well as encouraging active break times and lunch hours. The study also encouraged activity outside the classroom with pupils given active homework and parents engaged through newsletters.
We have taken the Active Breaks aspect of this study and rolled it out to schools through our Chester's Active Breaks Programme!
Our Sponsor Podium 4 Sport
Podium 4 Sport works alongside the Education Authority to provide sports and PE equipment and to service and repair school gym equipment across Northern Ireland. If you are looking for new equipment or information on servicing equipment, please visit Podium 4 Sport.
