INTENT
The PE curriculum at Callington Primary aims to provide all our children with high-quality physical education to enable and inspire them to build confidence and excel in their individual ability and achieve their potential. We provide opportunities for children to become physically confident within a varied curriculum allowing them to strive in competitive sports, build character and help to embed values such as fairness and respect. We believe there is a sport/activity that every child can enjoy and participate in. Therefore, we endeavour to give all children a variety of experiences throughout the year across PE lessons, after school clubs and external coaching.
IMPLEMENTATION
Children are taught regularly by both teaching staff and a sports instructor from Reception to Year 6. The curriculum is further enhanced by participation in sporting tournaments with other schools in the area and after school clubs.
We follow the guidelines set by the national curriculum to ensure we offer a range of PE activities that allow each child to feel challenged and offer opportunities to progress further.
As part of the EYFS statutory framework pupils are taught physical development. This involve providing opportunities for young children to be active and interactive; and to develop their co-ordination, control, and movement. Children must also be helped to understand the importance of physical activity, and to make healthy choices in relation to food. The second area is moving and handling where children are taught to show good control and co-ordination in large and small movements. They move confidently in a range of ways, safely negotiating space. They handle equipment and tools effectively. The final area is health and self-care: children are to know the importance of physical exercise and a healthy diet and talk about ways to keep healthy and safe.
In Key Stage 1, pupils develop fundamental movement skills, become increasingly competent and confident and access a broad range of opportunities to extend their agility, balance and coordination, individually and with others. They are able to engage in competitive (both against self and against others) and co-operative physical activities, in a range of increasingly challenging situations.
Pupils are taught to master basic movements including running, jumping, throwing and catching, as well as developing balance, agility and co-ordination, and begin to apply these in a range of activities. We also encourage participation in team games; developing simple tactics for attacking and defending and teach the children to perform dances using simple movement patterns.
In Key Stage 2, pupils continue to apply and develop a broader range of skills, learning how to use them in different ways and to link them to make actions and sequences of movement. They enjoy communicating, collaborating and competing with each other. They develop an understanding of how to improve in different physical activities and sports and learn how to evaluate and recognise their own success.
Pupils are taught to use running, jumping, throwing and catching in isolation and in combination. Children are encouraged to play competitive games, modified where appropriate (for example, badminton, basketball, cricket, football, hockey, netball, rounders and tennis), and apply basic principles suitable for attacking and defending. We develop children’s flexibility, strength, technique, control and balance (for example, through athletics and gymnastics) as well as teaching them to perform dances using a range of movement patterns. There are opportunities for children to take part in outdoor and adventurous activity that challenges them both individually and within a team. Finally, we encourage them to compare their performances with previous ones and demonstrate improvement to achieve their personal best.
Swimming
Once children reach Year 4, they will participate in an hour of daily swimming lessons for one week led by our qualified teaching staff and hired swimming instructors.
Top-up sessions are held in Year 5 and again in Year 6 to enable all children to achieve the required 25m.
IMPACT
Our curriculum provides children with 2 hours of stimulating activity per week, which has an advantageous impact on their well-being. Within our lessons, children are taught about self-discipline and that to be successful you need to take ownership and responsibility of their own health and fitness. Our impact is therefore to motivate children to utilise these underpinning skills in an independent and effective way in order to live happy and healthy lives.
In all classes, children have a wide range of 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 and in doing so raise pupil’s health and fitness levels, improve skills and develop pupil’s resilience, teamwork and perseverance (school values).
The use of assessment, questionnaires and surveys (pupils and staff) and by talking to children, the quality of lessons and confidence in the teaching of PE improves and as a result the level of enjoyment and positive outcomes increases.
A recent inset day was utilised to increase the confidence of staff across PE lessons to include planning, assessment and lesson content. The positive impact of this CPD on teacher’s confidence and ability has been seen recently through lesson observations and pupil conferencing.