Our PE Subject Leader is Miss Charlotte Webb. 

Intent:

Physical education develops the children’s knowledge, skills and understanding, so that they can perform with increasing competence and confidence in a range of physical activities. These include dance, games, gymnastics, swimming and water safety, athletics and outdoor adventure activities. 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 – through a holistic approach to sport and healthy lifestyles, we enable children to make informed choices about physical activity throughout their lives.

The aims of PE are:

• to enable children to develop and explore physical skills with increasing control and co-ordination;
• to encourage children to work and play with others in a range of group situations;
• to develop the way in which children perform skills and apply rules and conventions for different activities;
• to increase children’s ability to use what they have learnt to improve the quality and control of their performance;
• to teach children to recognise and describe how their bodies feel during exercise;
• to develop the children’s enjoyment of physical activity through creativity and imagination;
• to develop an understanding in children of how to succeed in a range of physical activities and how to evaluate their own success.
• to develop communication and speaking and listening skills.
• to provide children with a skillset which can be used and developed throughout their lives.

Implementation:

Dance, gymnastics, games, athletics, and outdoor and adventurous activities are taught across all year groups. Swimming and water safety skills are taught in year 4 (with additional lessons for those children in year 6 who did not reach the 25m requirement). Teachers are encouraged to use a range of schemes and resources in order to plan their lessons, which must be based on the school’s progression of skills document. Planning is also informed by ongoing assessment (using criteria agreed across the academy that are based around National Curriculum objectives) in order to build upon the prior learning and progress of the children.

In all classes there are children of differing 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. We achieve this through a range of strategies:

• setting common tasks that are open-ended and can have a variety of results, e.g. timed events, such as an 80m sprint;
• setting tasks of increasing difficulty, where not all children complete all tasks and allowing children to set their own challenges to achieve a personal best, e.g.  completing one or more laps of a given cross country circuit;
• providing a range of challenge through the provision of different resources, e.g. different sized or shaped balls for dribbling.

Resources

There are a wide range of resources to support the teaching of PE across the school. They are stored safely in easily accessible areas and containers. Children help to set up and put away this equipment as part of their work. If any resources are missing or found to be damaged, the P.E. Lead should be informed as soon as possible so that such items can be repaired or replaced.

Members of year 5 and year 6 are trained externally by Active Surrey to form the school’s Sports Crew team. They are ambassadors for sport within the school and can be relied upon to demonstrate skills, activities, warm ups, cool downs and help with the set-up of equipment.

Health and safety

The general teaching requirement for health and safety applies in this subject. We encourage the children to consider their own safety and the safety of others at all times. We expect them to change for PE into the agreed clothing for each activity area. The school PE kit is as follows: shorts and t-shirt for indoor P.E. and a tracksuit, t-shirt and trainers for outdoor P.E. Staff are role models, setting a good example to children by ensuring that they are wearing appropriate clothing and footwear at all times.

Extra-curricular activities

As a healthy school we promote a wide range of activities for pupils of all ages. The school provides a range of PE-related activities including football, fitness/circuits, netball, rounders and tennis for children at the beginning or end of the school day. External companies provide additional opportunities such as basketball, judo and cross country running. These encourage children to further develop their skills and fitness in a range of areas. The school sends details of the current club activities to parents at the beginning of each term. The school also plays regular fixtures against other local schools and participates in interschools and district competitions. This introduces a competitive element to team games and allows the children to put into practice the skills that they have developed in their lessons. These opportunities foster a sense of team spirit and co-operation amongst our children. The whole school participates in active brain breaks which can include a daily mile challenge, seated Pilates and dancing – these short breaks take place during lesson time.

Contribution of PE to teaching in other curriculum areas

English: PE contributes to the teaching of English in our school by encouraging children to describe what they have done and to discuss how they might improve their performance. They learn subject specific terms which develops their vocabulary. It also develops speaking and listening as children listen to and follow instructions and give feedback to peers.

Computing: We use iPads to support PE teaching when appropriate e.g. in dance and gymnastics children make video recordings of their performances and use them to evaluate and develop their movements and actions.  In addition, where a child has a health condition that prohibits their participation in PE, they are given access to the iPads to conduct research on a given area relevant to the PE unit being taught.

PSHE and citizenship: Children learn about the benefits of exercise and healthy eating, and how to make informed choices. Through friendly competition and team work, PE teaches our school and British Values of respect, trust, mutual respect and tolerance.

Spiritual, moral, social and cultural development: The teaching of PE offers opportunities to support the social development of our children through the way we expect them to work with each other in lessons. Their work in general enables them to develop a respect for other children’s levels of ability and encourages them to co-operate across a range of activities and experiences. Children learn to develop a better understanding of themselves, their own capabilities; assessing and celebrating their personal and team achievements. The focus is on achieving personal bests; completing tasks to the best of their abilities with a positive mindset.

Impact:

The subject leader is responsible for monitoring the standard of the children’s work and the quality of teaching in line with the school’s monitoring cycle. This may be through lesson observations, work scrutiny, monitoring of assessment or pupil interviews. In addition, the subject leader is responsible for supporting colleagues in their delivery of PE lessons (modelling lessons and team teaching where required), keeping them informed of the latest developments in subject specific research and providing strategic lead and direction for the subject across the whole school. Dedicated time is set aside for the vital task of visiting classes to observe teaching in the subject and to discuss PE with both children and staff.