Subject Leader – Mrs Milne
PE Rationale
In our PE curriculum we begin and end each unit with an assessment lesson. This is so that children can recap and recall their learning and deepen their vocabulary and oracy for the subject as well as their physical skills set. Our pre/post-assessment means that both the staff can truly gain an insight into what the children know before and after our teaching. We record assessments on to seesaw so that they children can see their own learning journey. We have created a Learning Journey Log for each year group so that the lesson targets are shared with the children and they can self-assess as they learn. Taking ownership over their own learning should result in a great will to achieve. This should promote a positive relationship with physical activity and sport.
We follow the national curriculum guidance but we have written our own LTP and progression of skills so that the curriculum is skills based and really gives our children a chance to improve their fundamental skills/gross/fine motor skills. We don’t focus on teaching a specific sport/set of rules, but rather teach a set of interchangeable skills that can be applied to a range of activities. The children are shown and taught specific sports but only once their skills are imbedded well-enough to access them. We ensure that vocabulary is introduced and displayed for each unit to support the whole-school reading target.
Our children have previously had a defeatist attitude towards PE as the children believe they are ‘no good’ at a skill/sport, and really struggle to accept defeat. To address this, we have integrated intra and interschool sports so that the children to have experience of loss in a friendly environment, where participation is heavily praised. We have also placed the main focus of each PE, and PA session on ‘personal targets’, so that the children are competing against themselves rather than others. This means that more children have a greater chance of improving and succeeding.
Across the school, using information from pupil voice, I found that there is inactivity in all classes when it comes to movement. To combat this, I have set-up a PE Council that directly address the issues of inactivity through the deployment child-led lunch time clubs, including a PE ‘reading club’ where children can choose to read books centered around sport/PE in an attempt to further encourage them to take part physically. Alongside this, KS2 are taking part in the MOKI Band challenge to improve on their moderate to vigorous physical activity each day. Our cultural capital will improve in September 2022 when we take part in School Games events as well as Education Enterprise festivals and leagues. This will show the children how diverse sport can be and hopeful foster a love for it within them.
“PE sessions are my favourite because we are allowed to use lots of space, equipment and energy. I love learning about new sports from around the world.” – Jayden, KS2
Willington Primary School PE Intent
Our intent is to foster a love of movement and the desire to lead an active and healthy lifestyle, through enthusiast teaching which encourages independence, resilience and teamwork.
At Willington Primary School our motto is TEAM – Together Everyone Achieves More, and we truly employ this in our PE lessons, encouraging team spirit, cooperation and collaboration, as well as healthy competition. We passionately believe that leading an active lifestyle can benefit the children both physically and mentally, and our high quality delivery of PE, Physical Activity and School Sport, provides all children with opportunities to develop their physical skills, communication skills, evaluative skills and teamwork.
Implementation
At Willington Primary School, we strive to inspire ALL children to lead healthy, active lifestyles because physical activity impacts our mental health and encourages the growth of new brain cells. Over time, people that exercise regularly grow faster and sharper brains with better academic results, and have improved mental health. We want each and every one of our children to have access to daily physical activity and a wide range of sports so that they can feel mentally engaged, physically strong, and adopt a healthy lifestyle.
By the end of Year 6, each child will have received a high quality of Physical Education, alongside daily physical activity and the opportunity to take part in school sports competitions. Children will have the skills, confidence and motivation necessary to equip them for a healthy, active lifestyle and encouragement to partake in lifelong physical activity and sport.
Therefore, all children receive 1 hour of taught PE each week, supplemented with two twenty-minute ‘active playtimes’ led by our Sports HLTA. In Year 4, the children receive weekly swimming lessons at Brandon Swimming Pool with a qualified instructor.
In our Physical Education lessons (PE), each lesson focuses on fundamental movement and key skills that are transferrable to many sports, as well as targeted skills/rules to access specific sports. Please see our LTP for more details on the skills and sports covered. Within our PE lessons, the children are encouraged to set personal targets to work on and use these to assess their progress across a series of lessons. We do this to build their confidence and belief in themselves that they can improve. We use a ‘PE learning journey’ booklet with all children in each year group so that the children can see their targets and progress.
Across our school, we don’t just expect to see children moving during their PE lessons. We encourage all classes to use ‘Active Blasts’/’Brain Breaks’ whenever they feel their children need a mental reset or ‘moment of movement’ to expel any energy and refocus their minds. This could happen within any lesson, at any point during the day. Other opportunities include: a range of extra-curricular activities both before and after school, use of MOKI Bands in Key Stage 2 to track moderate to vigorous physical activity, and active break times where the children are provided with boxes of specially chosen equipment to help develop the skills that they have been working on in PE.
We also believe that all children should have the chance to experience a broader range of activities including competitive sports. Thus, each class has the opportunity to attend at least one intra-school event per year with the other local schools. Alongside this, we hold various inter-school festivals and competitions, as these instil wonderful values such as resilience, respect and teamwork, as well as providing suitable challenges for all. We take part in local competitions ran by Education Enterprise Limited, include our wider community in sports by inviting parents to our annual sports days, encourage Park and Stroll/Walk Once a Week (WOW), and expose the children to professional athletes and local clubs across the year. In 2022, we hosted a Taekwondo event with a local club, Judo workshops for all classes, invited coaches from Bishop Auckland Girls Football Club to train with girls from both Key Stages, and were visited by pole vault GB athlete Charlie Myers! We also attended handball, tag rugby and boccia.
Impact
We have earned the SILVER School Games badge for the second time in a row, for our efforts in inter and intra-school competitions and festivals.
We also have a lot of children now participating in our after school sports club, and our pupil voice questionnaires, revealed that PE was the second favourite subject for the children.
We truly believe that PE can be accessed and enjoyed by all of our pupils and celebrate their success at every opportunity. We endeavour to overcome barriers and inactivity with advice from the PE Council that is guided by our children to ensure that we truly understand their feelings towards PE and how we can make it enjoyable for all.
In 2022, our PE council made the decision to trial the change of the PE LTP temporarily to begin the year with dance. They believed that this would help to engage more children in PE lessons, as listening to music is very popular within the school and dance can be very collaborative so those that felt ‘on-the-spot’ during more competitive sports, could exceed. In January 2023, we will use pupil voice to gather the children’s opinions on this change, and hopefully, more children will express a love of PE.
Swimming and Water Safety outcomes- Year 6
- Able to swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of 25m- 53%
- Use a range of strokes effectively, 10m unaided (front crawl, backstroke and breaststroke)- 47%
- Perform a self rescue in different water-based situations- 57%
School Games Mark Gold Award
We are pleased to announce that we have been awarded the School Games Mark Gold award 2022/23.
The School Games Mark is a government-led award scheme launched in 2012, facilitated by the Youth Sport Trust to reward schools for their commitment to the development of competition across their school and into the community.
The gold award is for those schools that have challenged themselves and demonstrated their progress over time against a national benchmark.
We are extremely proud of our pupils for their dedication to all aspects of school sport, including those young volunteers, leaders and officials who made our competitions possible.
We are delighted we have been recognised for our success.
“I love batting the ball. I am getting better at it so I want to beat my personal best this year.” – Zach, KS1
