Physical Education (PE)
Subject Lead: Mrs McGough
A warm welcome to our PE page. At St Joseph's, our curriculum has been designed to excite and inspire all of our children, ensuring it is purposeful, progressive and meaningful for every child.
Intent
At St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, our intent is to provide all children with high quality PE and sports provision, in a safe and supportive environment. Through our inclusive and engaging lessons, the abilities of all children are met for them to achieve their personal best, and to inspire a love of Physical Education and sport. We recognise the importance of PE and the role that it has in supporting active lives and healthy, happy children. Additionally, we also want to provide children the opportunity to experience a range of sports and activities that they may not have previously had the chance to try. Through our PE curriculum, we will teach the children fundamental skills that can be developed as they progress through the school. During Key Stage Two, children will learn important life skills such as swimming and water safety. In our lessons, the children will develop other skills that are vital when working as part of a team, such as good communication, honesty and respect. These skills are transferable to the classroom, promoting their social and emotional development.
Implementation
When planning the PE curriculum, we worked alongside a PE teacher from Bishop Hogarth Catholic Education Trust to ensure all the requirements of the National Curriculum are met and a range of skills are taught. The curriculum has been planned with clear progression and will allow children to build on prior learning, with skills being taught during KS1 and developed and refined further throughout KS2.
In KS1 pupils learn basic movement skills (running, jumping, throwing and catching), as well as balance, agility and co-ordination. Lessons will provide children the opportunity to extend and master these skills on their own and in a team, and apply them to a range of activities including gymnastics, dance and invasion games. Learning in KS2 offers children the opportunity to apply and develop their skills independently and within games/sports and routines.
The units are organised across half terms, and we teach two hours of high-quality PE lessons per week. From Y3-Y6 the children complete one of their PE lessons with an experienced KS3 teacher who works within Bishop Hogarth Catholic Education Trust. Alongside this, teachers are planning PE lessons to be challenging and enjoyable for all children, using resources from the GetSet4PE scheme of learning. Every lesson has clear learning objectives, a success criteria and objectives for the ‘Whole Child’ (social, emotional, thinking). As the children progress through the school, they will develop their unit specific vocabulary and use these in the lessons well.
Children in Key Stage 2 have the opportunity to go swimming as a two week block every term in addition to their two hours a week curriculum PE lessons. During these lessons, children are taught to swim 25m, use a range of swimming strokes (front crawl, back stroke and breaststroke) and to perform safe self-rescue in different water situations. As swimming and water safety is a National Curriculum requirement for Primary PE, if children have not achieved these requirements, they are sent again for top-up sessions in UKS2.
We encourage children to challenge themselves to achieve their personal best in PE lessons, active break times and sport competitions. In addition to developing physical skills, we want to promote active lives and a love of sports. We do this by celebrating success that the children have displayed, ‘The School Games Values’: honesty, determination, teamwork, and self-belief. Throughout the year children in Key Stage 2 are invited to sports festivals and competitions within the local area. We aim to include all children in these events in order to encourage a love of sports.
Every year we send a group of children to train as ‘Sports Leaders’. This means that they can create/run activities on a break time and have the responsibility of looking after playground equipment. From September, the new Sports Leaders will be given extra responsibility of organising termly personal challenges and level 1 sporting competitions during break times.
We aim to make our children as active as possible throughout the day through implementing active learning, providing all classes with playground equipment, and showing them how to use it successfully.
As well as attending competitions, we take part in taster sessions and workshops that cover a range of sports. This provides children with the opportunity to try new activities and to improve their fitness. Previously, we have taken part in skipping, judo, hula hooping and boxing.
EYFS - Physical Development (PD)
By the end of the Foundation Stage children will have developed and refined their gross motor skills. They will achieve this through throwing and catching balls and bean bags, using underarm or over arm throws. They will develop a more fluent style of moving by navigating around obstacles, riding scooters and trikes, as well as using bouncy hoppers with control. These activities will develop their overall body strength, co-ordination, balance and agility.
Stockton Schools' Sport Partnership
We work closely with Stockton Schools’ Sport Partnership (SSP) which believes that all young people should be encouraged to lead a healthy and active lifestyle and that it is important for all children to develop a lifelong enthusiasm for sport and physical activity.
By working alongside them, we endeavour to provide children opportunities to develop their physical, social and emotional skills through experiencing high quality competitions and sports leadership. We want our students to engage in regular activity to kick start healthy & active lifestyles, access a broader ranger of sports and activities, and increase their participation in competitive sports.
Impact
When pupils leave our school, they will have mastered the fundamental movement skills and can apply these to a range of sporting activities. They will have developed their fitness skills and experienced how to communicate and work effectively in a team. In addition, they will have experienced a range of sports, which we hope inspires a love of sports and active lives. Our pupils will leave primary school healthy, happy and active, and ready for Key Stage 3 and their learning journey.
"Exercise is an amazing tool to help us feel happier, more energised, and more optimistic."
- Joe Wicks