Physical Education

Intent

At St. Edward’s, we want our Physical Education curriculum to help develop children’s knowledge, skills and understanding of both indoor and outdoor sports. We aim to allow children to gain a greater experience of competitive sports in a fun and exciting way. Our curriculum provides opportunities for children to become physically confident in a way which supports their health and fitness. Furthermore, we hope to inspire children in teamwork activities, which helps build character and embeds values closely linked to our school values, including fairness, respect and perseverance. We provide a well-rounded and balanced curriculum which incorporates structured indoor and outdoor lessons. The themes and topics children learn vary, but all lessons are underpinned by the ‘ABC’ of PE, which is agility, balance and coordination.

Our lessons provide 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. Our intention is 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. 

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. Teachers are provided with technical glossaries, skills posters and structured plans to 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 practice 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. Formative assessments are supported through the inclusion of assessment grids on lesson plans where notes can be recorded to show different children’s achievements and where challenge or support is required in future lessons. PE learning journeys are intended to show a personal formative record from the child’s perspective.

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, such as Romans and Traditional Tales. This all helps to make the learning memorable, allowing links to be made and ultimately creating a higher level of engagement and understanding.

Our PE curriculum helps achieve our vision of Life in all its fullness by…

Mind: children being challenged to learn and develop new skills. Being exposed to technical vocabulary will help improve children’s knowledge and understanding of the topics taught, as well as help raise the profile of sport, PE and physical activity. 

Heart: allowing children to work together and demonstrate the core values of our school, including: friendship, respect and perseverance.  

Body: children will become more active and healthier, allowing them to appreciate the importance of sport in their lives. 

Spirit: children will gain a greater awareness of teamwork and how important this is to sport.

The impact of following our plans will increase the profile of sport, PE and physical activity across the school. With technical PE vocabulary displayed, spoken and used by all learners, the learning environment will be more consistent across both key stages.

Our PE Units for this academic year can be found here:

The progression of skills within each unit, through each theme of learning and from year to year can be found here:

Swimming at st edward's

At St Edward's we are incredibly fortunate to have our own Swimming Pool Complex. This allows children to have weekly Swimming lessons from the Summer Term of Reception until the end of Year 4. 

In Year 5 and Year 6 children have Water Polo and Lifesaving Skills lessons, for part of the year, with the exception of those children who have not met the National Curriculum Requirements for swimming, who continue with their swimming lessons. 

Learning to swim has a number of benefits. As an island nation with a wide range of rivers, lakes and canals, water is everywhere. At some point in their life every child will be around water. By the time a child is ready to leave St Edward's, and often much sooner, we aim for our children to be able to swim, know how to get out of trouble if they fall into water, know the dangers of water and understand how to stay safe when playing in and around it.

We have two specialist teachers who have the the necessary knowledge, skills and competence to plan, teach and assess all three elements safely and effectively.

Benefits of water safety and swimming lessons:

• Learning to swim allows pupils to have fun in the water with family and friends. •
• Water safety is an essential life-saving skill.
• Swimming provides numerous physical and mental benefits throughout a pupils’ life.
• Knowing how to swim provides access to many other water-related activities – and careers.
• Learning about water safety in different water environments and situations is vital to staying safe in and around water.

Our children are grouped by ability to allow us to tailor our curriculum to their individual needs, acknowledging that children come to school with different experiences in the water.