PE
Intent
At Ashmead school, we want our active citizens and sports people to become physically confident and competent, in a way that supports their health, fitness and mental well-being. We intend to deliver a wide range of physical activities and sports, as part of a broad and balanced curriculum, ensuring pupils are able to enhance existing skills, learn new skills or be introduced to new sports, clubs, teams and organisations. Alongside our school values, we teach our pupils to understand fair play and equity of play and embed life-long values and the disciplines PE promotes. Opportunities beyond PE lessons such as extra-curricula clubs, festivals, tournaments and competitions promote a further sense of community for our pupils.
Implementation
The PE curriculum is taught through the use of The PE Hub, which directly links to the National Curriculum, and ensures a progressive model for pupil learning. The scheme provides top-quality content, with clear and high expectations, which is adapted to align with the needs of all pupils.
The long-term plan, created through The PE Hub, sets out the PE units which are to be taught throughout the year, and ensures that the requirements of the National Curriculum and EYFS are fully met. It ensures that pupils have time to practice increasingly complex movement patterns through a range of approaches to develop, consolidate and deepen their knowledge, understanding and skills.
‘We have designed The PE Hub to give schools a broad menu of activities to choose from when planning their curriculum. The PE Hub provides coverage of the National Curriculum by dividing it up into three main areas; which we have designated as follows:
1. Physically competent, physically active.
2. Tactics and strategies, decision maker, creative and competitive.
3. I can, I want to, I will.’
The progression document for each activity outlines the key skills and concepts pupils will master over time, including motor competence, rules, strategies, tactics and knowledge of safe and effective participation.
In line with the Early Years framework, pupils’ physical development is one of the prime areas of learning and underpins the development of other skills such as reading, writing and attention. Fundamental movement skills are a clear focus and encouraged using both the indoor and outdoor provision. Specific areas and resources have been developed for pupils to learn and practise specific skills, including balancing, climbing, jumping, throwing and catching, and kicking and moving in a range of ways. Pupils develop skills through adult-led activities and opportunities within continuous provision and play.
In Key Stage One and Key Stage Two each class has access to two hours of high-quality physical activity every week, comprising of a combination of indoor and outdoor sessions. Within each lesson, pupils are given the opportunity to practice skills in a variety of ways, building upon what has been learnt previously, and allowing pupils time to embed them within their long-term memory.
Pupils participate in a range of activities including: Invasion Games, Net and Wall Games, Striking and Fielding, Gymnastics and Dance, Athletics Activities, Outdoor Adventure, Health Related Fitness and Swimming.
Sports and activities are thoughtfully and carefully selected ensuring progression of knowledge and skill as a priority. Our rationale also considers other factors underpinned by the use and impact of the PE and Sport premium with the aim to increase staff confidence, knowledge and skills in teaching PE and sport; increase engagement of all pupils in regular physical activity and sport; raise the profile of PE and sport across the school to support whole school improvement; offer a broader and more equal experience of a range of sports and physical activities to all pupils and increase participation in competitive sport.
We consider pupil voice, including sports or activities the pupils would like to participate in, access, or feel they would like to develop. We select sports and activities pupils may be invited to compete in against other schools so pupils feel confident. We identify activities and sports pupils could freely access for recreational purposes, providing pupils with the knowledge and skills to safely set up games to support playtimes or free time outside of school in a socially respectful manner. We want to provide a passion for health and fitness and identify accessible local clubs linked to the activities and sports selected should pupils wish to pursue an activity or sport further. Sports and activities are repeated annually based on skill progression so pupils are able to draw upon prior learning and develop their knowledge and skills further.
Where units are repeated within a year group, the units provided by The PE Hub ensure progression, e.g. Dance 1 and Dance 2. The activities and sports are distributed to ensure maximum use of facilities and equipment available.
Swimming
The pupils in Year 4 receive weekly swimming lessons, as a 12-week block per class, with the aim of being able to: swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres, use a range of strokes effectively and perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations. Everyone Active school’s swimming programme is accredited by Swim England and endorsed by double Olympic Champion Rebecca Adlington. It promises quality teaching that is inclusive to all and tailored to the individual abilities of every pupil.
Knowledge of knowing what (declarative knowledge) and knowing how (procedural knowledge) is best applied through physical demonstration/modelling and physical participation. Through demonstrations, which may include external expertise, teacher demonstration, videos, or in-class experts, all pupils can develop a clear picture of what success looks like and focus towards it. Ultimately, the instruction, practise and feedback that pupils receive within lesson time should enable all pupils to develop their competency, reinforcing the important message that everyone can improve. We also appreciate that PE provides a different environment to the classroom setting and some pupils may require different forms of support to access the curriculum.
Appropriate vocabulary is explicitly considered and taught within the curriculum planning to enable our pupils to communicate with confidence, access learning and participate with assurance. Subject specific vocabulary (Tier 3 vocabulary), e.g. precise names of rules, strategies, tactics, and words which may have several meanings within written text (Tier 2) are identified so pupils can learn the definitions within context. Within lessons, we encourage pupils to evaluate their own work as well as the work of their peers. For this to be successful, and feedback focused on improving the quality of their efforts, pupils are taught how to assess though clear learning objectives, success criteria and understanding of key terminology.
Inter-house competitions
Every pupil is assigned to a house: Kestrels, Falcons, Hawks and Eagles and the inter-house competitions allow every pupil the opportunity to play representative sport and work as a team.
Inter-school competitions
We attend inter-school competitions which comprise of friendlies, matches, festivals, tournaments or organised leagues.
Extra Curricula opportunities enable pupils to participate beyond their PE lessons, giving them more time to practise, extend and refine their knowledge. It also celebrates a variety of different activities, some of which might not be included in the school PE curriculum. This also includes the importance of protecting opportunities for physical movement and activity during play-time and lunch time. For a full list of termly clubs, please see the icon on the school website.
We want our pupils to be aspirational and have therefore identified athletes and teams from a wealth of sports covered, including diversity in terms of gender, able bodied or disabled, different cultures, religions, local, national and international, for example, to inspire our pupils. These are introduced at the start of each unit.
Impact
Our active citizens and sports people will be confident and able to talk about what they have learnt in PE, and the wider opportunities given, using subject specific vocabulary. Pupil voice will demonstrate that pupils enjoy PE and are able to recall their learning over time. Pupils work and performance in lessons demonstrates that PE is taught at an age appropriate standard across each year group with opportunities planned in for inclusion of all.
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