Intent
It is our intention to build a curriculum that enables children to develop knowledge, skills and vocabulary in a broad range of sporting activities, as well as developing values and transferrable life skills such as fairness and respect.
Our long term plan is broad and balanced, allowing children to access a wide variety of high quality PE and sports provision. The long term plan begins by focussing on the fundamental skills (ABC) and then moving onto skills and activities that can lead to different sports. Further up school, we start making the links between sports and finally in years 5 and 6, it becomes more sport specific as we get them ready for secondary school. Physical education in our school aims to promote an understanding in children of their bodies in action. It involves thinking, selecting and applying skills and promotes positive attitudes towards a healthy lifestyle. Thus we enable children to make informed choices about physical activities throughout their lives. Children are given plenty of opportunities to build upon prior knowledge, allowing children to know more, and remember more. Throughout their time in school we try to provide children with plenty of after school clubs that introduces them to a variety of different sports and physical activities that they perhaps wouldn’t normally come across. We also offer opportunities to take part in competitive sports throughout the year. Provisions such as after school clubs and competitions are enhanced through the use of the Sports Premium Funding.
Implementation
Pupils at Park House participate in weekly high quality PE and sporting activities. Our PE programme incorporates a variety of sports to ensure all children develop the confidence, tolerance and the appreciation of their own and others’ strengths and weaknesses. Each class has access to 2 hours of high quality PE lessons every week. These are either taught by the class teacher or by support coaches e.g. 560 staff members. Children are given the opportunity to practise skills in a variety of ways and each lesson builds upon the previous skills, allowing them time to embed it. Different skills are recapped throughout and across the years, each time they are being built upon; allowing children to know more and remember more. We also aim to deliver a range of inter and intra events run throughout the school year, giving children opportunities to take part in competitive sports.
In regards to swimming, as a school we allocate the first term to children who have not yet achieved 25m and their water safety requirements. We then move onto Year 4 receiving weekly swimming lessons. These lessons run throughout the rest of the year. This means that children have the best opportunity to meet the swimming requirements as they have had the majority of the year to learn, practise and apply the skills needed.
We offer a wide range of sporting after school clubs run by an outside agency called Qualitas. We have tried to make the after school clubs easily accessible by paying for them out of our Sports Premium money. The majority of our ‘sports’ after school clubs are changed once every half term. We have done this so that the children have access to a wide range of activities and that cater for all abilities. Clubs run a minimum of three times a week, this is increased during the summer terms when we have access to more outdoor space.
All pupils also have the opportunity for physical activity during morning, lunchtime and afternoon breaks on the school playground, field and MUGA. Staff and Playground Leaders (trained pupils from KS2) are on duty to co-ordinate a range of active playground games.
Year 5 and Year 6 also have an annual residential trip during the year, in which they undertake a series of physical and challenging activities, including: assault course; mid-ropes to high wires; climbing wall; tree climb.
During the summer we hold an annual Sport Days for EYFS and KS1/2 covering traditional sporting activities. During this event we do promote friendly competition. Although we do encourage competition points can also be rewarded for taking part. These point are all tallied and the winning ‘School House’ wins the trophy at the end of the events. This event is very well received from the majority of children and parents in school, parents are also encouraged to take part in the day by entering the parents/carers races at the end of the day.
Along with our cluster schools we also participate in a school sports package that is lead/ supported by Qualitas. This allows us to enter events and competitions alongside these other schools. These events are designed to include children from Y1- Y6 and cover a wide range of activities e.g. gymnastics, cross-fit, dance festivals, water polo etc. Pupils in KS2 are given the opportunity to be part of Park House football team (this is for boys and girls). They compete in the Tupton Cluster League that is also supported by Qualitas.
Impact
In all class’s children have a wide range of physical abilities. 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 and in doing so raise pupil’s health (considering childhood obesity) and fitness levels, improve skills and develop pupil’s resilience, teamwork and perseverance (school values).
The use of assessment, CPD, observations and by talking to children ensures that the quality of lessons and confidence in the teaching of PE improves and as a result the enjoyment and positive outcomes increases.
The majority of Year 6 pupils leave school with the skills to self-rescue in the water and swim 25 metres.
Due to our range of after school clubs our children have a wide knowledge of a variety of different sports that they wouldn’t normally have access to. These sessions have developed the children’s understand of different sports as well as the skills that are needed to participate in each one. As a school we have also seen small increase in participation year on year, this has resulted in us needing to have more than one coach during some of the clubs.