We believe that P.E. is an integral part of the curriculum, allowing children to experience various sporting activities and competing at different levels and abilities both in and outside the school. All pupils have at least two hours plus P.E. per week. We encourage all children to participate in all lessons and events and offer a varied range of activities to suit all abilities. The school also offers a large number of after-school sporting activities, some of which are open to all children and some are only available to children who have shown a skill in that sport.
PE overview of the units
Please click the link below to see the National Curriculum for PE
Primary PE National Curriculum
PE Curriculum Statement
Intent
PE develops a child’s knowledge, skill and understanding, so that they can perform with increasing competence and confidence in a range of physical activities. A varied curriculum is in place to support this, with activities including: dance, athletics, gymnastics, games, swimming and water safety and outdoor adventure activities.
At St Patrick’s, we want our school motto ‘May Christ be seen in us’ to be central to all P.E lessons, where children always behave in Jesus’s image. The core Catholic values will remain in sporting competition both in and outside of school where teams will be built on respect.
Physical education promotes an understanding in children of their bodies in action. It involves thinking, selecting and applying skills and promotes positive attitudes towards a healthy lifestyle. Thus we enable children to become independent in their choices for an active lifestyle in the future.
Through the teaching of PE, St. Patrick’s intends to:
- Enable children to develop and explore physical skills with increasing control and co-ordination.
- Encourage children to work and play with others in a range of group situations.
- Develop the way children perform skills and apply rules and conventions for different activities.
- Show children how to improve the quality and control of their performance.
- Teach children to recognise and describe how their bodies feel during exercise.
- Develop the children’s enjoyment of physical activity through creativity and imagination.
- Develop confident, self-motivated children who want to live a healthy, active lifestyle.
- Assess pupils learning, analyse and interpret the results to inform future planning and lessons.
Implementation
All pupils from Year 1 to 6 have at least 2 hours’ worth of planned physical exercise each week. Each topic area (see impact) is covered throughout the year on a half termly basis. The staff use a selection of 2 schemes of work in order to show progression throughout school. Cross curricular links are made where appropriate.
PE is further supplemented in Key Stage 1/2 by the use of the Daily Mile – an initiative that we have adopted to encourage pupils to walk, run, skip, hop etc around a track on the school yard, to increase the amount of physical activity they participate in each day during break and lunchtimes.
Pupils from Year 1 to 6 also have the opportunity for physical activity during morning and lunchtime breaks on one of two well-equipped school yards, stocked with resources. Staff and Sports Councillors (trained pupils from Year 5 and 6) are on duty to co-ordinate a range of active playground games.
Pupils from Year 5 attend a weekly swimming lesson at SPLASH swimming pool, where they are blocked in for 2 weeks sessions in each term, the aim is to ensure each child can swim 25m by end of this year.
Year 6 have an annual residential trip during the summer term in which they undertake a series of physical and challenging activities, including: gorge walking; water sports; bushcraft and country walking.
Pupils from Y5 and 6 have the opportunity to take part in sport’s council. This allows children to help create the curriculum and sporting life throughout the school. The children develop confidence to set up sporting competitions and charity events.
During the Summer term Sports Days are held for EYFS and KS1/2 covering traditional sporting activities, however the focus during these events is participation.
As St. Patrick’s is supported by the Stockton School’s Sports Partnership from EYFS to Year 6 have the opportunity to participate in variety of Healthy Active Lifestyle festivals as well as School Games events held across the town, which introduce a more competitive element into sporting activities. They also provide staff training on a yearly basis.
Inter-house competitions take place on a half-termly basis in KS1 and KS2. Each half term a different sport or area of the curriculum is the focus of the competition. This allows the children to compete for places on the school team.
When needed, sports professionals are brought in to deliver P.E sessions and after school clubs for the children. These are from the local area.
Impact
In all class’s children have a wide range of physical ability. Whilst recognising this fact, we provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child and in doing so raise pupil’s health (considering childhood obesity) and fitness levels, improve skills and develop pupil’s resilience, teamwork and perseverance (school values). Children who demonstrate sporting skill are signposted to the best sporting clubs for them.
The use of assessment, questionnaires and surveys(pupils and staff) and by talking to children the quality of lessons and confidence in the teaching of PE improves and as a result the enjoyment and positive outcomes increases.
Teachers continually use assessment of the children’s responses and the work they produce to measure impact. Subject leaders play an important part in the success of the curriculum by leading a regular program of monitoring, evaluation and review. This includes learning walks and lesson observations to measure the impact on. The leadership team in consultation with staff and children regularly review and renew the P.E. curriculum to ensure all elements are fit for purpose. Governors play an active part in measuring the impact of the curriculum and work closely with subject leaders to challenge and support, helping shape the intent and implementation of the curriculum on offer at St. Patrick’s.