PE & Sports
"Intelligence and skills can only function at the peak of our capacity when the body is healthy and strong."
John F. Kennedy.
Intent
The PE and Sport curriculum at Lawn Primary School develops the enjoyment of physical activity and strives to improve the importance of health and wellbeing. Our intention is to give children the opportunity to develop their skills and knowledge and understanding and apply these in competitive situations, with the vision that this provides them with lifelong learning skills. Children are helped to acquire the skills needed to participate with confidence and enjoyment in a range of individual team activities at school and in the wider community, and to appreciate the place of regular exercise as a way of keeping fit. We ensure that all our children receive well-rounded learning experiences when participating in different sporting activities, engaging them in a range of sports to develop a passion for being active, healthy and confident, and try new things and build resilience and determination with all they do.
Our PE curriculum covers the knowledge and skills outlined in the National Curriculum and ensures all children are given opportunities to be challenged to progress their learning further. Through our teaching of PE, we aim to deliver the lessons in a meaningful context, giving purpose and wherever possible curricular links are exploited, particularly links with Maths, British Values, Our Schools Values and SMSC. All children take part in a minimum of two hours of PE and sporting activities each week provided by their class teacher.
A well-balanced programme of sporting activities is provided for the children that includes opportunities for expressive and creative movement through dance, as well as gymnastics, swimming, athletics, games and outdoor adventurous pursuits. Learning through co-operative and competitive activities helps to promote an understanding of inter-personal relationships. Children take part in sporting activities within the school, and with other schools, including local tournaments and competitions. Physical education is enriched through a range of well-attended after school clubs and activities including football, athletics and gymnastics. Such opportunities enable children to develop personal and social skills as well as preparing them for leisure activities in adult life (cultural capital)
All children in year 6 take part in a long weekend residential visit at a PGL Activity Centre. A range of outdoor adventurous pursuits are offered including abseiling, climbing, kayaking, orienteering, archery and low ropes. We value these opportunities for our children to participate in physically challenging land and water-based activities, believing they can make an important contribution to children's personal and social development.
Implementation
At Lawn Primary School we follow GetSet4PE as our curriculum. These sessions are clearly thought through with progression and skills at the heart of what we do. The lessons are designed to build on prior learning; utilise retrieval skills for the children; develop vocabulary and skills through direct teaching and discrete game-based activities; consolidate learning at the end of each unit and build in fundamental skills to be taught.
GetSet4PE allows us to ensure that will have full curriculum coverage while skills are learnt and then developed in later years. Each session follows the planning scheme set by them, unless specific tailoring is needed, at which time a class teacher will make appropriate adaptations for the specific pupils. The sessions start with a warm-up and introduction, reminders of knowledge from the previous lessons and vocabulary, skill development time specific to the unit being delivered and then finally plenary. Coaching skills are regularly built into the sessions and mini-games are sometimes set by the staff or led by the children. Collaboration, overlearning and coaching allows us to ensure that children have maximum retention of skills.
We use a selection of detailed and descriptive knowledge organisers to ensure that all staff and pupils are using the correct vocabulary, and the level of depth is appropriate for all abilities.
As we have gained further knowledge of GetSet4PE, we are now able to review the original choices we made about given topics and decide which to adapt or change. Some of these changes also come from Pupil Voice.
Timetabling is rigorous and it allows for all children to have fair access to the range of resources both inside and outside. When appropriate, we will look to use our school field, Daily Mile track and even some of the local Secondary Schools for wider opportunities.
The GetSet4PE curriculum is something that follows closely to our Trust Sport Series competition (both set up by us) which is ongoing between the three other Primary Schools in our trust. By having flexibility when planning our whole school implementation, it allows us time to teach specific units in preparation for competitive sport competitions.
Impact
Measuring the impact of GetSet4PE has been a process that we have adapted as our knowledge of the curriculum has grown. Previously, we assessed every child at the end of every topic using an arrow-based system to signal “working towards”, “expected” and the “greater depth”. Upon review of this system and the usefulness of it, we have deemed it appropriate to stop this and continue to use a range of robust assessment strategies to measure progress.
We start by using Pupil Voice. The questions and strategy allow us to work with those who matter the most directly – the children. We are able to assess their knowledge of their current topic; their knowledge of the skills needed for a given sport or activity; their knowledge of how to get better or support others; their retrieval ability of the current topic and the one before it. This process will happen three times a year with a random selection of children from the class. It has already been a beneficial process with the understanding that retrieval of key vocabulary was a difficulty for some of our children. Following this, we have now introduced new quizzes that the children take part on for each topic they work on. The quiz allows an element of fun and overlearning. As we move on with this process this quiz will also start to act as our “hot” and “cold” task at the start and the end of a topic to support assessment.
Learning Walks make up part of our assessment process in P.E. This process allows our subject leader to ensure that there is a robust delivery of the curriculum, knowledge organisers are being used and discussed when appropriate and the tasks are appropriate for coherent learning to take place.
We have discussions with staff to understand what is working well in the unit, how they feel the children are getting on with the learning and if there is anything else that could be done to support this process. It is a time when we are able to listen to what staff members say about the children which can be cross referenced at a later date in a Pupil Voice or Learning Walk.
We will continually look for further ranges to assess the impact of the P.E. curriculum possibly using technology to our advantage as time goes on. Using tablets to identify body forms and shapes in gymnastics is something that is already used from peer to peer. Recording performances when appropriate including cheerleading competitions that we enter. Public performances of dance routines like the Maypole dancing at the Mayfair.
