Physical Education
Intent
At The Holy Spirit we believe that physical education, experienced in a safe and supportive environment is a unique and vital contributor to a child’s physical development and wellbeing. A broad and balanced physical education curriculum is intended to provide for children’ increasing self-confidence in their ability to manage themselves and their bodies within a variety of movement situations and skills.
We believe physical education should be an area of learning where self-esteem, physical progression and positive attitudes are fostered and nurtured. Physical Education provides all children, regardless of ability or experience, with the opportunity to succeed, whether through personal or team success. Physical Education also promotes an active, healthy lifestyle which children can develop and value into their adult lives.
Through our Physical Education curriculum we aim to build on pupils’ self-confidence and give each child a sense of achievement by:
- Developing a love for being active and an enjoyment of play.
- Develop ‘fitness for life’ through promoting the health benefits of regular exercise.
- Identifying and encouraging talents.
- Develop self-esteem, confidence and social skills.
- Contribute to the physical development of every child through indoor and outdoor activities.
- Give children a way of expressing themselves and an opportunity to be creative.
- Develop a range of skills that can be applied in other contexts.
- Give children the opportunity to widen their experience of sport and games.
These aims are achieved by providing a variety of teaching and learning styles which involve a mixture of whole-class, group and individual activities. Educators will model good skills and techniques and also draw attention to good examples of individual performance to use as models for the other children. Specialist resources and framework are provided and reviewed for staff to create a well sequenced and progressive curriculum map containing the key concepts children need to succeed.
Implementation
Physical Education is taught using a blocked curriculum approach covering all areas stipulated by the National Curriculum and developing pupil’s progress across the key concepts of P.E; Physical skills; Thinking skills; Personal skills; Health skills. Knowledge and skills are mapped across each topic and year group to ensure systematic progression. To value and nurture children’s development of; understanding of their own movements and physical range; their ability to assess and solve situations during game play and creative scenarios; confidence, collaboration with others and self-evaluation; understanding of the benefits to a healthy, active lifestyle and how to value this into adulthood.
The Holy Spirit pupils are encouraged to evaluate their own work as well as the work of other children. Within lessons children have the opportunity both to collaborate and compete with each other, and they have the opportunity to use a wide range of resources. Every lesson should be focused around a clear learning objective and a broken-down success criterion, to explain ‘how’ the learners will achieve their learning objective. Learners should be made aware of this at the start of each lesson and review their learning at the end of each lesson.
Activities should be differentiated, appropriate to the needs and ranging abilities of the class. Pupils are encouraged to achieve smaller targets on their way towards showing an overall understanding of each unit taught. Each lesson must have a planned extension activity or adapted skill, to extend the lesson’s learning objective, where appropriate for the more able children. Staff will use both dialogue and demonstration as teaching tools throughout all lessons. Particular skills should be modelled and discussed. Good practice should be highlighted throughout each session and next steps in their learning will be covered at the end of, and start of each lesson.
- KS1 will be taught how to; Develop fundamental movement skills, become increasingly competent and confident and access a broad range of opportunities to extend their agility, balance and co-ordination, individually and with others. They should be able to engage in competitive (both against self and against others) and co-operative physical activities, in a range of increasingly challenging situations.
- Master basic movements including running, jumping, throwing and catching, as well as developing balance, agility and co-ordination, and begin to apply these in a range of activities.
- Participate in team games, developing simple tactics for attacking and defending.
- Perform dances using simple movement patterns.
- KS2 will be taught how to; Apply and develop a broader range of skills, learning how to use them in different ways and to link them to make actions and sequences of movement. They should enjoy communicating, collaborating and competing with each other. They should develop an understanding of how to improve in different physical activities and sports and learn how to evaluate and recognise their own success.
- Pupils should be taught to use running, jumping, throwing and catching in isolation and in combination play competitive games, modified where appropriate [for example, cricket, football, hockey, rounders and tennis], and apply basic principles suitable for attacking and defending.
- Develop flexibility, strength, technique, control and balance [for example, through athletics and gymnastics].
- Perform dances using a range of movement patterns.
- Take part in outdoor and adventurous activity challenges both individually and within a team.
- Compare their performances with previous ones and demonstrate improvement to achieve their personal best.
Impact
At The Holy Spirit, we believe the regularly reviewed framework, resources and support for staff help to provide pupils with the opportunity to become skilled and knowledgable of their own movement, social interaction with others, tactical awareness and creativity. Standards of children's work and of the quality of teaching in Physical Education is the responsibility of the Physical Education Coordinator and informs planning and review using structured formats such as the annual action plan and monitoring. The Physical Education Coordinator has specially-allocated, regular management time in order to review evidence of the children's work and undertake lesson observations of Physical Education teaching across the school. The Physical Education Coordinator monitors the quality of teaching and learning, progress and attainment in Physical Education through; staff voice, lesson observations and recordings of lessons and analysis of the data which is completed on the relevant assessment resources at the end of each topic.
All of these procedures support the continual development of the subject and, in turn, the opportunities and progression of the pupils to reach our high standards and expectations.