PE

Within our PE Curriculum, we want to foster an enjoyment of the subject and love of PE. We want to ensure that the children have the skills necessary to live healthy lives with a real enjoyment of PE and sport. We want to ensure that all of our pupils have a chance to play competitive sports within our community and within local competitions.

Our PE curriculum is planned and sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before. We recognise that new learning is fragile, so our approach is generative and sticky, enabling our pupils to make links between new and existing knowledge to aid long term retention.

In Key Stage 1 and 2, PE is taught termly through 6 stand alone hour long lessons per half term. Alongside this, daily 10 minute movement breaks reenforce the fundamental skills that the children are learning in their PE lessons. Additional opportunities  are planned throughout the year for the enrichment of our curriculum with Warrington Sports Partnership.

Our curriculum is fully aligned to the national curriculum and ensures that the key knowledge and skills for each year group can be seen in our progression maps. These have then been broken down the national curriculum and focus on the development of agility, balance and coordination, healthy competition and cooperative learning through a consistent approach to teaching and learning in PE

Our curriculum maps show the progression of skills in the six key areas, Cognitive, Creative, Applying Physical, Social, Personal and Health and Fitness alongside the progression in the Fundamental Movement Skills (FUNS) which build competence in movement throughout the curriculum.

Our PE Curriculum helps support EVERY child to develop the physical literacy, emotional and thinking skills to achieve in PE, Sport and life. Our child centred approach ensures that we include, challenge and support EVERY child.

It is fully aligned to the National Curriculum  and focuses on the development of agility, balance and coordination, healthy competition and cooperative learning through a unique and market leading approach to teaching and learning in PE

1. Language development

Within PE, communication is essential in the delivery of the curriculum. Personal, Social and Cognitive skills are explicitly taught. Collaborative work and dialogic teaching empowers students to challenge each other’s views, expand ideas and build team work. Collaborative work is central to our teaching of PE.

PE is a vocabulary rich subject. Therefore, the development of vocabulary in PE is vital in them closing the vocabulary gap that research shows exists between them and their peers.  Vocabulary is explicitly planned, taught and assessed, ensuring a thorough grasp of new language. New vocabulary is referred back to in subsequent lessons, promoting sticky learning and scaffolding all children in retaining key language and information.

2. Knowledge

Our approach throughout the curriculum is generative, enabling pupils to make links between new and existing knowledge to aid retention.  Development of both disciplinary and substantive knowledge is well sequenced to ensure that children know and remember more.  Topics are explicitly taught for one term yearly, however, opportunities are planned into the curriculum for these skills to be revisited throughout ensuring spaced repetition..

When knowledge is secure and links have been made, children are encouraged to take this knowledge deeper and apply this critically and with more independence applying these to games. 

While the teaching of disciplinary knowledge is key to progress in subjects, children require the opportunity to turn this knowledge to practice and apply skills and fieldwork gives our children opportunities to apply these skills. Our Curriculum planning ensures that these opportunities are embedded for all children.

3. Attitudes and values

Interpersonal and communication skills are central to the teaching of our PE curriculum. Children are explicitly taught the teamwork skills that they need to become a vital member of a team. We ensure that children have experience of winning and losing and want them to develop a growth mindset. In PE lessons, rather than simply praising success, we praise effort and persistence. We believe learning should be a challenge for all of our pupils and allow them to make mistakes and learn from them. 

Local, Societal and Global

• As an Inclusion Quality Mark flagship school, inclusivity is key to our culture as a school. Within PE we ensure that all tasks are adapted so that all pupils can take part and succeed. Children with SEND are encouraged to take part in the Warrington Inclusion PE Festival Every year.

• We believe that physical fitness is central to the development of our children’s mental wellbeing. Therefore, we aim to ensure that the children build up a lifelong love of PE that they will take through with them to their next phase of education and beyond.

4. Developing a love of PE

Opportunities to develop cultural capital are embedded into the curriculum. Children are actively encouraged to take part in many different events through the year.

Additional enrichment opportunities are provided during yearly sports days.

As a school, we work closely with Warrington Wolves, Cheshire Cricket and Warrington Sports Network

Assessment:

Formative assessment is an integral part of daily lessons and is first and foremost the essence of helping making our pupils make instant progress in their PE knowledge and skills. This is done through a mixture of high-level questioning, discussion, Oracy activities and written work.

Verbal feedback is given throughout lessons to target next steps for pupils effectively. Opportunities for children to review and improve their learning are embedded into each lesson. Children are given the opportunity to evaluate their own work, and that of their peers. During and on completion of a piece of work, the teacher responds, identifying areas for development. Children’s work is valued, celebrated and displayed around the class and school.

Assessment tasks in each unit are filmed so that the teacher can analyse and make formal assessments of the progress the children have made in PE. These are stored on OneDrive.

Tracking of key groups allows for a better structure to learning and allows the Curriculum coordinator to adapt the curriculum where needed.

Where there is a specific area of learning that a significant group needs reinforcing, this will be done in the daily 10 minute movement breaks.

SEND and Inclusion

At Meadowside we have high expectations of all our pupils. However, we recognise that for some pupils, additional support is needed to ensure they can access tasks and so that they can retain key learning. Tasks are adapted or scaffolded in such a was so as to ensure that they are provide suitable challenges that focus on the scientific learning and remove any barriers for learning that stop learning in PE. Teachers use their pupil passports to help inform their planning. This way, a person-centered approach ensures progress is made and makes their learning a personalised experience.

At Meadowside, we want all learning to support independence wherever possible. Teachers will plan lessons so that pupils with SEND are able to successfully access the key content of the PE curriculum and ensure that no ceiling is placed on their learning and what they can achieve. Promoting independence, we allow the children to feel a sense of equality and belonging in their classroom environment.  

Ways that we can adapt tasks and scaffold to ensure access are suggested within the Real PE planning and are implemented within the lessons across school..

Where a child struggles with key aspects of learning, it is crucial that we highlight what is key knowledge for a child to move on with their learning. Progression maps highlight which knowledge is the basis for other knowledge later on within the PE curriculum. Staff therefore provide time for overlearning of this key knowledge where it is deemed appropriate for these children. Support and CPD is given to staff to ensure they have a good understanding of what learning is key to move on. These children are discussed regularly with the SENCo.

Higher Attainers

Opportunities for higher attainers to take learning deeper are planned throughout the curriculum. Open ended tasks and high quality first teaching ensure that learning is taken deeper. Enrichment opportunities are planned throughout the year and are reflected in us having achieved the Gold Games Mark Award.

CPD for staff

CPD is planned for staff throughout the year and opportunities are planned into our yearly training in line with our school development plan.  Staff are encouraged to also complete their own research. Medium term planning includes “Mastery For Teaching” recapping subject knowledge that will be needed to take learning deeper in PE. Where appropriate, staff will also find this out by asking questions to staff.

Monitoring of PE

The monitoring cycle is set out by the senior leadership team at the beginning of each academic year. Monitoring includes lesson visits, learning walks, pupil/staff voice surveys, analysis of assessment tasks and assessments. All monitoring undertaken serves to improve our practice, with the aim of bettering the outcomes for our pupils.

Impact

At Meadowside, we ensure that all students are exposed to rich learning experiences that:

• Enable all students to make good progress in PE developing the skills and vocabulary from whatever the students starting point may have been. We define good progress as knowing more and remembering more. It is the widening of knowledge, skills, understanding and behaviours.
• Children have self-efficacy and see themselves as Sports People. They take an interest in the aspects of PE and enjoy participation in Sport.
• We aim to ensure our children have a thorough understanding of PE
• for our pupils to be resilient and stick at sporting activity.
• for pupils leaving us to be well prepared for the next stage in their lives, particularly for the further study of PE at KS3.
• We aim for our children to participate in a range of Sporting activities both in school and at home.
• For our pupils to make healthy choices and have a healthy lifestyle