Curriculum Statement: PE
‘Excellence, Truth and Grace’
Physical Education Intent
At Middleton Parish Church School, we are athletes! We want our children to love physical education and sport. We want them to have no limits to what their ambitions are and grow up wanting to be personal trainers, nutritionists, sports journalist, or gold medal winners. We want them to embody our Christian values of ‘excellence, truth and grace.’ Thrive to be excellent in any physical activity that they endeavour; be true to themselves and the rules when competing in physical activity; and be gracious towards our opponents whether we succeed or fail.
The PE curriculum has been carefully crafted so that our children develop their sporting capital. We want our children to remember their PE lessons in our school, to cherish these memories and embrace the opportunities they are presented with! Bringing physical education alive is important here at Middleton Parish. We want to equip children with not only the minimum statutory requirements of the Physical Education National Curriculum, but to prepare them for the opportunities, responsibilities, and experiences of later life. For example, in the autumn term, Year 6 children complete their bike ability training, as part of our quest to subject our pupils to as many different sporting disciplines as possible. Children are shown around not only the basics of riding a bike, but they are also taught the importance of road safety as a result, many of these children now cycle to school. The curriculum is meticulously planned with the intention to address social disadvantage and ensure that all pupils have an opportunity to engage within a challenging curriculum and achieve success. Any gaps in pupils’ knowledge are quickly identified and addressed to ensure that pupils are supported in physical education.
We use the scheme ‘P.E Passport’ to deliver the curriculum to meet the needs of our pupils. We also extend the pupils learning through specialists coaching, some of which have included dance, karate, yoga, cricket, rugby and gymnastic professionals. Further to this, the Year 6 children have the opportunity to attend Robinwood during their outdoor and adventurous topic. Throughout their time at Middleton Parish, every child has the opportunity to develop their water safety and swimming skills outlined within the national curriculum. Those that are unsuccessful on their first attempt, are placed on additional swimming interventions provided by YourTrust. PE is at the heart of our extra-curricular activities here at Middleton Parish, where children are provided with a wide range of extra-curricular activities, such as multi-sports, football, cross country, netball, tag rugby, cricket, rounders and karate to name just a few. Children in our year 5 classes are trained in the sport leaders award and with this leadership opportunity, theyare able to lead, encourage and work alongside our younger children during play times and lunch times, providing encouragement, advice and an excellent model of good sportsmanship.
Physical Education Implementation
We have completed an audit of the PE curriculum. On the back of the findings from this audit, the PE curriculum has been carefully built and the learning opportunities and assessment milestones for each year group crafted to ensure progression and repetition in terms of embedding key learning, knowledge and skills. This is carried out through the PE Passport. For example, we focus our teaching on six main strands of physical education; dance, invasion games, gymnastics, striking and fielding games, athletics and net and wall games. These are revisited year on year where pupils progressively build their skills and knowledge. In addition to this we provide specialist swimming teaching to pupils in Year 4 and Year 6 and Yoga sessions for children in EYFS.
Physical Education subject specific characteristics, which we expect the children to demonstrate, have been developed and shared with all stakeholders. These characteristics underpin all work in PE and form a focal point for display areas and provide a common subject specific vocabulary for staff and pupils. These characteristics are:
- The ability to acquire new knowledge and skills exceptionally well and develop an in-depth understanding of PE.
- The willingness to practise skills in a wide range of different activities and situations, alone, in small groups and in teams and to apply these skills in chosen activities to achieve exceptionally high levels of performance.
- High levels of physical fitness.
- A healthy lifestyle, achieved by eating sensibly, avoiding smoking, drugs and alcohol and exercising regularly.
- The ability to remain physically active for sustained periods of time and an understanding of the importance of this in promoting long-term health and well-being.
- The ability to take the initiative and become excellent young leaders, organising and officiating, and evaluating what needs to be done to improve, and motivating and instilling excellent sporting attitudes in others.
- Exceptional levels of originality, imagination and creativity in their techniques, tactics and choreography, knowledge of how to improve their own and others’ performance and the ability to work independently for extended periods of time without the need of guidance or support.
- A keen interest in PE.
- A willingness to participate eagerly in every lesson, highly positive attitudes and the ability to make informed choices about engaging fully in extra-curricular sport.
- The ability to swim at least 25 metres before the end of Year 6 and knowledge of how to remain safe in and around water.
Our subject leaders liaise with teaching staff to organise, guide and carefully plot out the curriculum for each year group. Teachers are best placed to help make these judgements as they can incorporate curriculum links, where possible. Together they develop year group specific long-term curriculum maps thought the PE Passport which identify when the different subjects and topics will be taught across the academic year. The vast majority of subjects are taught discretely but staff make meaningful links across subjects. They link prior knowledge to new learning to deepen children’s learning. For example, during the spring term, pupils in Year 4 explore and create their very own Viking dance as part of their dance topic which linked to their history topic on Vikings. Our children are taught the right, connected knowledge.
Our short-term plans are produced for staff through the PE Passport, where staff are empowered with the tools to help them provide high quality PE lessons. We use these to set out the learning objectives for each lesson, identifying engaging activities and resources which will be used to achieve them.
We encourage staff to teach a weekly PE lesson. This was a notable change after the PE audit. This helps to ensure sufficient time is allocated to PE and that PE subject matter can be revisited frequently. We believe that by crafting our curriculum this way, we improve the potential for our children to retain what they have been taught, to alter their long-term memory and thus improve the rates of progress they make.
Physical Education Impact
We use both formative and summative assessment information in every PE lesson. Staff use this information to inform their short-term planning and short-term interventions. This helps us provide the best possible support for all of our pupils, including the more able. The assessment milestones for each phase have been carefully mapped out and further broken down for each year group. This means that skills in PE are progressive and build year on year. Our staff use the PE Passport assessment objectives to assess what the children know as the topic progresses and inform their future planning. This formative assessment then informs summative assessment judgements for each topic.
Assessment information is collected frequently and analysed as part of our monitoring cycle. This process provides an accurate and comprehensive understanding of the quality of education in PE. A comprehensive monitoring cycle is developed at the beginning of each academic year. This identifies when monitoring is undertaken. Monitoring in PE includes: lesson observations and/or learning walks, pupil/parent and/or staff voice. All of this information is gathered and reviewed. It is used to inform further curriculum developments and provision is adapted accordingly.
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