Healthy Connections School Competition

November 2020

Students share ways to stay healthy during COVID-19

A catchy music video starring pre-schoolers sharing ways to stay healthy during COVID-19 is one of the three $5000 winners of Sydney Local Health District's Healthy Connections school project competition.

The early childhood educators and children at Learning Wonderland Riverwood wrote "Stay COVID-free", to the tune of the hit song Baby Shark, as restrictions began to be imposed to stop the spread of the virus in NSW.

"Through many group discussions with the children we were able to come up with lyrics to our song "Stay COVID-free." Then it was time to put it all together to create our music video," Sia Papaspiropoulos, Learning Wonderland's director, said.

The children shared the song with the local community, to help keep them safe, connected and entertained.

"We all had so much fun creating this video for our community," Ms Papaspiropoulos said after the music video was named as the winner of the pre-school category.

Students from Strathfield North Public School won the primary school category.

The pupils designed a range of stickers and posters to keep the community informed about what to do during the COVID-19 response.

The judges said the students' competition entry was excellent.

"Each of the design explanations demonstrates that the students clearly understand the actions required to reduce the spread of COVID-19," one of the judges commented.

And, Eileen O'Connor Catholic College in Lewisham, a school for students with moderate intellectual disability and complex learning needs, won the high school category.

In 2020, its first Year 12 group will finish school.

With work experience in the community ruled out during COVID-19, staff set up a minimart and café to teach money handling, COVID-safe marshalling and QR code check-ins.

Senior students were also assigned tasks in the office and had mock job interviews on Zoom.

"We want 2020 to be a year they develop employable skills and gain a range of experience to better prepare them for life after school in a safe environment," Gail Pilley, one of teachers at the College, said.

"COVID continues to stretch our creativity to develop more ways for these goals to be achieved," she said.

The judges were impressed with the quality of all of the competition entries.

"Competition was fierce. It was hard to choose the winners because we received some amazing entries," they said.

The winners were announced at the District's 2020 AGM.