Physical Education

“Intelligence and skills can only function at the peak of their capacity when the body is healthy and strong.”

John F Kennedy

We believe it is our duty to provide our pupils with the skills, knowledge, understanding and experiences, which will enable our pupils to lead healthy, well-balanced and active lifestyles. This will be achieved through carefully planned and sequenced units of work in a deliberately wide range of activities, enriching experiences, competitive sporting opportunities and extracurricular clubs.

Intent 

Our aim at St. Richard’s is to cultivate children’s ability and to provide opportunities for them to: 

· develop competence to excel in a broad range of physical activities  

· be physically active for sustained periods of time  

· engage in competitive sports and activities  

· lead healthy, active lives.  

We have a planned sequence of lessons to help teachers ensure they have progressively covered the requirements of the PE National Curriculum. This scheme of work ensures that children have a varied and well mapped out PE curriculum. It provides the opportunity for progression across the full breadth of the PE National Curriculum for KS1 and KS2 for both indoor and outdoor PE. This progression is clearly identified on progression maps and each lesson has been carefully planned to match these. In KS1, the focus of the PE curriculum is on the development of the fundamental skills that will be built upon in KS2 when they are applied in specific sports. It is our intention to develop a lifelong love of physical activity, sport and PE in all young people. We aim to help ensure a positive and healthy physical and mental outlook in the future and help young people to develop essential skills like leadership and teamwork. Within each lesson, we strive to give every child the opportunity to develop skills in PE, consider the impact on their health and fitness, compete/perform and evaluate. These elements are always clearly identified both in lesson plans and on progression maps. All lessons are carefully differentiated which helps to ensure that learning is as tailored and inclusive as possible. It is also to ensure that every child has access to at least 30 minutes of physical activity every day. 

Implementation 

Our detailed lesson plans ensure that all teachers are equipped with the secure subject knowledge required to deliver modern, high-quality teaching and learning opportunities for all areas of the PE National Curriculum. Technical glossaries, skills posters and adult guidance support teachers in their subject knowledge, allowing them to share technical vocabulary and skills clearly, confidently and concisely. Our overarching aim is for teachers to have the knowledge and skills they need to feel confident in teaching all areas of PE, regardless of their main areas of expertise. Lessons are planned alongside subject-specific progression maps to ensure that children are given the opportunity to practise existing skills and also build on these to develop new or more advanced skills. There is a structure to the lesson sequence whereby prior learning is always considered and opportunities for revision and practise are built into lessons. However, this is not to say that this structure should be followed rigidly: it allows for this revision to become part of good practice and ultimately helps build depth to the children’s knowledge, skills and understanding in PE. Interwoven into the teaching sequence are key assessment questions. These allow teachers to assess the different levels of understanding at various points in the lesson and also allow time to recap concepts where necessary, helping to embed learning. Assessments will be carried out on an end of term/end of block basis. The tracker should also show next steps and identify children.   

Impact 

Each unit is mapped against the progression documents to ensure that learners develop detailed knowledge and skills across the full breadth of the PE curriculum through engaging and age-appropriate curriculum content. Our indoor units are often themed with strong cross-curricular links to other subjects and topics. This all helps to make the learning memorable, allowing links to be made and ultimately creating a higher level of engagement and understanding. Attainment and progress can be measured using our assessment spreadsheets. The high quality and consistent approach to PE teaching, should significantly improve attainment in knowledge and skills in PE. 

The impact of using specialist coaches from SHARES, will increase the profile of sport, PE and physical activity across the school.