Physical Education Vision

Our Physical Education (PE) curriculum will encourage children to develop a positive view of physical education so children will appreciate the health benefits of being active and will enjoy taking part in physical activities. By making PE fun and engaging, through memorable experiences, participating in competitions and engaging in sport related visits, children will be inspired to maintain a consistent level of physical activity; resulting in forming healthy lifestyle habits to last a lifetime.

Children will develop strong values and character through the PE curriculum to impact on their holistic development. Children will understand how choices that they make now, in terms of physical exercise and diet, will affect their growth, overall health and opportunities as they move into adult life.

Intent

Our aim is for all our children to become active individuals and to take part in physical activity for a minimum of at least 60 minutes a day. This is achieved through our curriculum teaching, through the purposefully planned regular activities within the wider curriculum and during outdoor recreational time.

We provide a broad, balanced and rich curriculum that is planned progressively building up to clear end points where children build upon knowledge & skills which have been taught before and have opportunities in different practical contexts to apply them. Our curriculum aims to improve the wellbeing, mental health and fitness of all children not only through the sporting skills taught, but by underpinning the values and disciplines that PE promotes.

We have high expectations for all our children and our lessons are designed and successfully adapted to meet the needs of all the children. Children develop their knowledge, skills and understanding so that they are able to work independently, with growing confidence and self-esteem. We have a strong focus on inclusion so all children, including our disadvantaged pupils and those with special educational needs and disabilities, can achieve exceptionally well.

Throughout our curriculum, children develop a wide range of skills and apply them to a range of sports. We have a strong commitment to developing all our children as confident swimmers and the national curriculum expectation for swimming 25 meters and understanding safe water rescue is a minimum target for all. This secures a crucial life skill ensuring our children’s safety in water-based environments outside of school.

We teach children cooperation skills as they work collaboratively with others as part of an effective team, both within the curriculum and during our extra-curricular offer. They are able to apply these skills, generally, across all areas in their lives.

Implementation

Our long term planning has been designed so that there is a focus upon the development of key skills and knowledge within the units, over the course of the year and across all the key stages. Although specific sports are chosen as a vehicle for delivery, these skills are transferrable and are developed further as they are applied across a range of sports when they are visited at various points throughout their primary education.

In Key Stage 1, children develop fundamental movement skills, become increasingly competent and confident and access a broad range of opportunities to extend their agility, balance and coordination, individually and with others. They should be able to engage in competitive and co-operative physical activities (both against self and against others), in a range of increasingly challenging situations.

Children are taught to:

• 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.

In Key Stage 2, children continue to apply and develop a broader range of skills, learning how to use them in different ways and link them to make actions and sequences of movement. They enjoy communicating, collaborating and competing with each other. They develop an understanding of how to improve in different physical activities and sports and they learn how to evaluate and recognise their own success.

Children are taught to:

• use running, jumping, throwing and catching in isolation and in combination
• play competitive games, modified where appropriate (for example, badminton, basketball, cricket, football, hockey, netball, 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.

In order to achieve outstanding pupil outcomes, our teachers are provided with strong professional development from external specialists in order to develop their own knowledge, skills and understanding of the PE curriculum. They understand the progression of skills and how best to plan and teach them so that every child makes good progress to achieve good results, regardless of their starting point.

This on-going support results in the delivery of high quality lessons. By working alongside PE specialists, teachers gain an expert knowledge of PE requirements and our provision continues to improve further.

We provide a range of opportunities for our children to increase their levels of physical activity. This is with the aim that they will improve fitness and remain active in their daily life. Our physical activities for the week enable us to meet the government requirement of taking part in at least 60 minutes of physical activity per day. This is supplemented with activities set outside of the timetabled PE lesson.

Children are required to walk, jog or run a mile in the playground every day during their allocated break or lunchtime sessions. Additionally, all children take part in the ‘Weekly Workout’. This is delivered by a qualified dance teacher and is streamed into all the classrooms via a video link.

A sporting challenge is also set each week for children to complete during their break time. Children, appointed as ‘Sports Leaders’, lead the delivery of these sessions. The scores are recorded and winners are announced in our school’s weekly newsletter. The weekly challenge allow children to compete against themselves and others to beat their own and others’ scores.

We have introduced a fortnightly Active Maths session for all year groups, whereby one part of the maths lessons is dedicated to an active approach for developing or applying mathematical knowledge and skills. This is with the aim of reducing sedentary learning and improving children’s fitness levels. This is also having a positive impact upon learning outcomes in mathematics.

A wide range of sporting clubs are offered to children from Year 1 to Year 6. Participation in clubs does not only mean the children’s physical fitness and ability is improved but this also has a positive impact on the children’s confidence levels. The new-found confidence is applied in all areas of the curriculum as well as in their general lives.

Impact

We have been awarded with the Bronze and Silver School Games Award and we are aiming to achieve our Gold Award this year. This is testament to our commitment to improving the provision for PE in our school.

Our physical education offer equips our children with the knowledge and skills of a wide variety of sports and a real love for getting active. Through our PE curriculum, our children will be equipped with the necessary knowledge, skills, motivation and love for physical activity that will enable them to understand the importance of improving their strength and stamina in order to maintain a healthy life. We inspire our children to continue sports participation long after they have finished their schooling at County Bridge. Some of our success stories include children joining and competing in dance and gymnastic competitions outside of school. One of our children have signed professionally for the ‘Under 18 Squad’ at Stoke City Football Club.

We understand the importance of swimming as a vital life skill and our curriculum expectations reflect this. More and more of our children at the end of Key Stage 2 are proficient swimmers and area able to perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations.

By exposing our children to a range of sports, our children will gain the skills and knowledge needed to prepare them for a life involving sports outside of school. PE promotes social values of fairness, solidarity, team spirit, mutual respect and tolerance and this has a huge impact on our children’s character development.

Through our wider ‘get active’ and extra-curricular clubs offer, children have the opportunity to embed some of the skills learnt. More importantly, the extra-curricular offer inspires the children to try new things, embeds the children’s interest in sports, provides children with an opportunity to build their confidence and self-esteem and has a positive impact on developing their social skills too.

Providing our children with opportunities to engage in high quality physical education, school sports and physical activity is improving the physical health and mental wellbeing of our children. Our curriculum inspires our children to continue their love for sports and influences their life choices as they continue into adulthood. An increasing number of children are joining clubs outside of school and we hope our PE curriculum continues to inspire our children to take up competitive sports as a careers option in the future. This would certainly be a legacy fulfilled following the London Olympics 2012 and would be a highly successful outcome of the sport premium grant.