PE

R-E-A-C-H

Retention – Extending Vocab - Application – Cultural Capital – Halsnead Values

Intent

At Halsnead Primary School, we see Physical Education as an opportunity to lay the foundations for our children to learn and develop the essential skills and knowledge to be life-long participants of physical activity. Our aim is to provide children with a high-quality education in PE which will inspire them and instil them with the self-belief to reach their own personal and academic excellence and to make physical activity a central part of their lives. It is our intent to ensure children understand the importance of leading a healthy lifestyle and to equip them with the tools to do so through health and wellbeing education.

In accordance with the National Curriculum, our intent when teaching PE is to develop children’s fundamental movement skills and increase their confidence and competence in a range of physical activities and sport, engaging in competitive and co-operative physical activities that will develop their skills in communicating and collaborating whilst considering their own and others’ needs, wants and values.  Children will apply and develop their understanding of how to improve in increasingly challenging situations and will learn to recognise, evaluate and critique their own success. The precedent for our curriculum is to create an ‘I can’ culture, where children have the self-belief to overcome challenges they face and to develop their resilience to enable them to not only achieve the goals they set themselves, but to exceed them.

Our intent follows three key principles:

• To develop children’s fundamentals skills to be able to engage in, and excel in, a broad range of physical activities
• To promote physical activity and physical fitness as fun to encourage children to lead healthy and active lives
• To develop lifeskills (such as collaboration, leadership and resilience)

Our curriculum is sequential, progressive and systematically deepens children’s growing knowledge and skills, building on the key fundamental skills each year as they progress through the school. Each medium term plan provides children with an extensive bank of vocabulary appropriate to the topic being taught that will be revisited before and after each lesson and built upon as they progress through the school. Our PE curriculum provides access to a wide range of sports and physical activities in which children can demonstrate and develop these fundamental skills through competitive activities, both against themselves and others. These opportunities allow for children to uncover new skills and discover activities that they enjoy. By providing children with these opportunities to explore and try new activities, we open up a whole new world of prospects for children to experience sports and activities that they enjoy and can develop a passion for. This principle is intertwined in our whole curriculum as we want our children to experience fun, challenge and enjoyment through physical activity and physical fitness to improve their mental, emotional, social and physical wellbeing and encourage them to apply these skills in their pursuit of a healthy lifestyle.

Beyond PE as a subject, we believe that participating in physical activity and sporting activity is a key element of developing a school in which children are proud of the community in which they belong. Therefore, we place a significant emphasis upon providing additional sporting opportunities beyond the lesson within after-school clubs, intra-school and inter-school competitions and festivals as well as directly trying to support our children in their pursuit of sporting participation through making strong community links. They will also demonstrate a healthy attitude to all forms of physical activity, to competition, showing respect for individuals, teams, officials and coaches.

Overall, children are provided with the opportunity to become independent learners and effective leaders who have all of the necessary tools to be life-long learners and participants of physical activity. 

Implementation - Quality First Teaching

At Halsnead Primary School we believe that exceptional PE teaching is when teachers and other school staff…

• Demonstrate secure subject and pedagogical knowledge in order to inspire children and build on their understanding;
• Plan lessons effectively taking children’s prior learning and current assessment into account;
• Adapt their teaching to cater for the needs and abilities of the children so they all have equal access to the learning;
• Have a good knowledge of common misconceptions and plan to address them;
• Introduce subject content progressively and have high expectations of all children;
• Provide adequate time for practise to embed the children’s knowledge, understanding and skills securely;
• Provide opportunities for retrieval questions based on learning from the previous lesson, week and topic to revisit prior learning and secure that learning in children’s long-term memory;
• Create lessons that are designed to consolidate, build upon and extend learning for all children;
• Emphasise the connections between PE and other areas of the curriculum;
• Use questioning effectively to gauge and extend children’s skills, knowledge and understanding
• Ensure that effective support is given in order for the children to make good progress;  
• Identify and support any child who is falling behind and enable almost all to keep up;
• Ensure higher attaining children who are able to grab concepts quickly are moved on to more challenging activities; 
• Use precise language when teaching skills and techniques;
• Use resources effectively, including other adults, to support children’s learning;
• Use technology effectively in order to support children’s learning;
• Provide feedback that identifies successes and next steps, where appropriate, so that children can improve their knowledge, understanding and skills.  

 

 

Planning

Long Term Planning

Whole School Overviews indicate the content to be covered from Foundation Stage to Year 6 for each individual year group based on the skills and knowledge outlined in the 2014 National Curriculum and the EYFS Development Matters Document.

Medium Term Planning

The subject leader is responsible for providing staff with an overview of the MTP before the end of the previous term. School overviews are separated into termly plans to ensure knowledge, skills and understanding of all areas in the long-term plans are met. Our MTP follows the PE Planning objectives that are linked to the National Curriculum requirements.  Clear progression is identified within the plans so that skills and knowledge are built upon each year.

Short Term Planning

Teachers are provided with a unit of work for each term with sequenced lesson content outlining the children’s starting point for the unit through their prior learning, the objectives to be met in line with the National Curriculum and a progression map of what children will be able to do by the end of the unit. Each lesson plan contains the objective of the lesson, curriculum links to be made, key vocabulary for the lesson and the content to be taught with key teaching points. Teachers use their subject knowledge, prior experience and knowledge of their class to alter and adapt these lessons to suit the needs and abilities of the children in their class; this allows for a more tailored approach within our PE lessons.

Implementation - Teaching Time

Each class has one PE lesson each week on a set afternoon. Our lessons are split into two parts for each term. The first part of the lesson will be the delivery of the unit of work from the Whole School Overview for that term. The second part of the lesson will provide additional learning opportunities for our children that focuses specifically on a concept of PESSPA that we deem to be an important part of our curriculum. These include: Outdoor Adventurous Activities/Orienteering, Yoga, Fitness, Fundamentals and Small-Sided Games (SSG).

OAA and orienteering provides children with great opportunities to develop key life skills through mental and physical challenges and to be encouraged to work in a team, building on trust and developing skills to solve problems either individually or as a group.

Yoga provides our children with opportunities that they will not be used to in their busy lives: the opportunity to press the pause button, to focus their attention on their mind and body, and to show gratitude to themselves for the hard work they do each and every day. The aim is that children will be supported and encouraged to find ways to regulate themselves emotionally through the teaching of breathing exercises and developing their knowledge of their own emotions and feelings, focusing on the key area of mindfulness and promoting their own self-esteem.

Fitness is a concept that is integral to our intent of our children being life-long participants of physical activity. By delivering this topic, we provide our children with the skills and knowledge to live a healthy life by staying fit and active. Our children will learn how to look after their wellbeing by living physically active lifestyles as well as the benefits physical activity and fitness can have on their mental, emotional, social and physical wellbeing. With sports promoting competition between others, these fitness lessons will encourage children to compete against themselves through the setting of personal goals that they will set out to achieve and exceed. Children will take part in a range of challenges and have opportunities to create their own circuits. Children in Years 5 and 6 will have opportunities to develop their leadership qualities by creating and delivering fitness circuits and challenges for our children in the lower year groups.

Fundamental movement skills are the building blocks of an active lifestyle; they underpin every movement that we will make throughout our lives. We believe it is crucial for young children to acquire these skills and develop them from an early age to ensure that they are given the opportunity to excel in physical activities. These fundamental skills also contribute to children’s overall development by helping them to lead full, active and healthy lifestyles.

Small-sided games provide a fantastic opportunity for children to practise the skills they have been taught during our lessons. One of the most important benefits of using SSG is the provision it gives for children to be more actively involved.

All children in KS2 will access professional swimming coaching each academic year.

We are active members of ‘The Daily Mile’ initiative which aims to improve the physical, social, emotional and mental health and wellbeing of our children. The Daily Mile is a fully inclusive social physical activity, with children running or jogging – at their own pace – in the fresh air with friends. It provides children with social, non-competitive fun that helps contribute to the government target of all children being active for at least 60 minutes a day.

In addition to our PE offer, children are encouraged to take part in the wide range of extra-curricular activities we have available. Break time and lunch time sports activities are available each day and will be led by our PE Leaders with the support of the PE subject lead. Our extra-curricular school clubs offer children additional opportunities to take part in school sport and physical activities. 

Throughout the academic year, we take part in a host of inter-school competitions organised by Knowsley School Sport Partnership. Due to Covid-19, during the 20/21 academic year the competitions moved online and we took part in a variety of virtual competitions including the Merseyside Pentathlon, the ABC Knockout Cup and the Winter Virtual Games. As well as inter-school competitions, we organise intra-school competitions to raise the profile of PESSPA throughout the whole school. During the 20/21 academic year, we organised The Battle of the Bubbles which was a fantastic platform for our children to compete together as a class against the other year groups in their key stage. Since then, children have relished the opportunity to go to external competitions organised by our SGO, as well as frequent competitions throughout the year with other schools in our MAT.

 

Implementation – Monitoring

The Professional Development Plan clearly outlines a rigorous monitoring cycle. There may also be incidental monitoring when SLMT feel it is necessary.

The monitoring cycle includes:

• Planning

Planning is reviewed, and quality assured by the Senior Leadership and Management Team and the PE subject lead regularly throughout the school year.

• Development Walks

Development walks will be carried out during the PE Subject Leader’s management time and may be pre-planned. Additional informal development walks are carried out frequently by members of the SLMT at their discretion. When necessary, individual feedback will be provided either verbally or through Trello. General feedback will also be provided at the discretion of the SLMT.

• Assessment

For PE, our staff will use formative assessment during lessons to monitor children’s attainment and progress. This formative assessment enables staff to be responsive in their teaching by providing immediate feedback and support during lessons to help move learning on.

• Pupil Voice

Pupil voice will be carried out termly by SLMT. This will involve meetings with our PE Leaders to discuss all things PESSPA and give our children the opportunity to have a say in the provision of PESSPA at Halsnead, including extra-curricular clubs on offer, equipment and resources for the playground and competitions to plan/enter.

• Staff voice

It is the role of the PE lead to regularly check-in with teaching staff to monitor the provision of PE at the school. This will include looking at particular units of work and identifying what worked well and areas for development.

Equal Opportunities and Race Equality

All children regardless of their cultural heritage, sex, religion or ability will be given equal opportunities to develop their knowledge, skills and understanding of PE.

Special Educational Needs

At Halsnead Primary School we recognise the responsibility to provide a broad and balanced curriculum for all our pupils. When planning, teachers will provide the necessary support and reasonable adjustments to ensure all children can access the same knowledge, vocabulary and learning experiences.

Impact

• Staff audit and staff voice shows teachers have gained confidence in the teaching and delivery of PE with our new PE scheme
• We participated in 11 virtual competitions during the 2020/21 academic year and 15 competitions in the 2021/22 academic year
• We have provided children with additional learning experiences through external organisations including LFC Foundation, Lancashire Cricket, KSSP and KABs