Physical Education
Here is our yearly overview for 2023-24 detailing what lessons will be taught in each class.
Curling
As part of their P.E, this half term year 5 have been going to the flowerbowl and practicing Curling. As a resut of this, some children took part in a competion.
Gymnastics
This half term 8 children from years 3 and 4 took part in a gymnastics competiton at Longridge Gymnastics club.
Rugby
The rugby team has been competing in a Rugby tournament for past few months. We are very proud to say that they won every single game, including the final!
Pupils at Barton St. Lawrence Church of England Primary School are easy to distinguish by the personal qualities they present. They are happy, confident, articulate children with a love of learning and a sense of service, who recognise and celebrate their own individuality and that of other members of our community. They are generous, kind and welcoming; they are forgiving and understand justice. With God by their side, they face the world with resilience, integrity and joy.
1 Aims and Objectives
1.1 Physical Education develops the children’s knowledge, skills and understanding, so that they can perform with increasing competence and confidence in a range of physical activities. These include dance, games, gymnastics, swimming and water safety, athletics and outdoor adventure activities. Physical Education promotes 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, it enables and empowers them to make informed choices about continuing physical activity throughout their lives and to maintain and improve their mental and physical health.
1.2 The aims of PE are:
- to provide children with a minimum of two hours per week of physical activity.
- to enable children to develop and explore physical skills with increasing control and co-ordination;
- to encourage children to work and play with others in a range of group situations;
- to develop the way children perform skills and apply rules and conventions for different activities;
- to increase children’s ability to use what they have learnt to improve the quality and control of their performance;
- to improve children’s ability to control equipment and use it effectively.
- to teach children to recognise and describe how their bodies feel during exercise;
- to develop the children’s enjoyment of physical activity through creativity and imagination;
- to develop an understanding in children of how to succeed in a range of physical activities and how to evaluate their own success.
2 Teaching and Learning Style
2.1 We use a variety of teaching and learning styles in P.E. lessons. Our principal aim is to develop the children’s knowledge, skills and understanding and we do this through a mixture of whole-class teaching and individual/group activities. Teachers draw attention to good examples of individual performance as models for the other children and we encourage the children to evaluate their own work as well as the work of other children. Within lessons we give the children the opportunity both to collaborate and to compete with each other, and they have the opportunity to use a wide range of resources.
2.2 In all classes there are children of differing 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. We achieve this through a range of strategies:
- setting common tasks that are open-ended and can have a variety of results, e.g. timed events, such as an 80m sprint;
- setting tasks of increasing difficulty, where not all children complete all tasks, e.g. the high jump;
- grouping children by ability and setting different tasks for each group, e.g. different games;
- providing a range of challenge through the provision of different resources, e.g. different gymnastics equipment.
3 P.E. Curriculum Planning
3.1 P.E. is a foundation subject in the National Curriculum. Our school has adopted the Lancashire Scheme of Work, as the basis for its curriculum planning in PE. As required, we teach games, gymnastics, dance, athletics and outdoor and adventure activities. We have adapted the scheme, where appropriate, to the needs of our school. The school uses Garstang Swimming Pool for our swimming activities and we make trips to Tower Wood and Beacon Fell for our outdoor and adventure activities.
3.2 The curriculum planning in P.E. is carried out in three phases (long-term, medium-term and short-term). The long-term plan maps out the P.E. activities covered in each half-term by each year group during the year. The P.E. subject leader has planned this out to ensure a rich coverage of activities; taking into account the specialisms of year group staff, but mainly to inspire the children to try new things and discover their individual strengths.
3.3 Our medium-term plans, which we have adopted from the Lancashire Scheme, give details of each unit of work for each term. These plans define what we teach and ensure an appropriate balance and distribution of work across each term. The subject leader keeps and reviews these plans.
3.4 Class teachers have a daily plan for each P.E. lesson. These list the specific learning objectives for each lesson and give details of how the lessons are to be taught. The class teacher keeps and adapts these individual plans to suit the needs of the class. The class teacher and subject leader often discuss them on an informal basis.
3.5 We plan the P.E. activities so that they build upon the prior learning of the children. While there are opportunities for children of all abilities to develop their skills, knowledge and understanding in each activity area, there is planned progression built into the scheme of work, so that the children are increasingly challenged as they move up through the school.
4 Early Years Provision
4.1 We encourage the physical development of our children in the Reception class as an integral part of their work and ability to lead a happy, healthy life. As the reception class is part of the Foundation Stage of the National Curriculum, we relate the physical development of the children to the objectives set out in the Early Learning Goals. These underpin the curriculum planning for children aged three to five years of age.
4.2 We facilitate the children in developing proficiency, confidence in and control of the way they move, along with their handling of tools and equipment. This occurs through indoor and outdoor Continuous Provision and discrete PE lessons. We give all children the opportunity to undertake activities that offer appropriate physical challenge, by using a wide range of resources to support specific fine motor, gross motor (including core strength, balance and co-ordination) and life skills.
5 Contribution of P.E. to Teaching in Other Curriculum Areas
5.1 English
P.E. contributes to the teaching of English in our school by encouraging children to describe what they have done and to discuss how they might improve their performance.
5.2 Computing
We use ICT to support P.E. teaching when appropriate. In dance and gymnastics children make video recordings of their performance, and use them to develop their movements and actions. Older children compare each other’s performance from recordings and use these to improve the quality of their work.
5.3 Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) and Citizenship
P.E. contributes to the teaching of personal, social and health education and citizenship. Children learn about the benefits of exercise and healthy eating, and how to make informed choices about these things.
5.4 Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development
The teaching of P.E. offers opportunities to support the social development of our children through the way we expect them to work with each other in lessons. Groupings allow children to work together and give them the chance to discuss their ideas and performance. Their work in general enables them to develop a respect for other children’s levels of ability, and encourages them to co-operate across a range of activities and experiences. Children learn to respect and work with each other, and develop a better understanding of themselves and of each other.
6 Teaching P.E. to Children with Special Educational Needs and to More Able Children
6.1 At our school we teach P.E. to all children, whatever their ability. P.E. forms part of the school curriculum policy to provide a broad and balanced education to all children. Through our P.E. teaching we provide learning opportunities that enable all pupils to make progress. We do this by setting suitable learning challenges and responding to each child’s different needs. Assessment against the National Curriculum allows us to consider each child’s attainment and progress against expected levels.
6.2 When progress falls significantly outside the expected range, the child may have special educational needs. Our assessment process looks at a range of factors – classroom organisation, teaching materials, teaching style, differentiation – so that we can take some additional or different action to enable the child to learn more effectively. This ensures that our teaching is matched to the child’s needs.
- Pupils are identified in lessons as being More Able in Physical Education if they demonstrate a very high level of competence across the following five areas: Creative, Physical, Social, Cognitive and Personal.
Creative:
- Consolidates and develops skills in a creative, inventive and innovative way.
- Responds to stimulus in an innovative way.
- Offers a range of productive and viable solutions to a problem.
- Is confident in experimenting with acquired skills and ideas through application (e.g. within a gymnastic sequence, dance composition or game).
Physical:
- Explores and develops skills demonstrating control, fluency and quality in a range of activities.
- Demonstrates a range of skills in different compositional and tactical situations.
- Demonstrates good peripheral vision and uses this in a range of situations across activities.
- Shows precision when executing movement skills with high levels of co-ordination and balance.
Social:
- Demonstrates the ability to take the lead when working with others.
- Communicates clearly to others when describing their performances showing an understanding of tactics/strategies and compositional ideas.
- Demonstrates the ability to make good decisions when working collaboratively.
- Enables and empowers other pupils to participate effectively in activities.
Cognitive:
- Demonstrates the ability to transfer skills effectively across a range of activities.
- Demonstrates the ability to plan and utilise a range of strategies in a number of activities.
- Identify strengths and weaknesses, offering suggestions for improvement, across a range of performances.
- Uses a broad analysis vocabulary when describing performance.
Personal:
- Shows motivation, commitment and focus when working.
- Demonstrates the ability to self-regulate learning in independent learning environments.
- Demonstrates the ability to evaluate their own performance effectively.
- Handles feedback in a constructive way and uses this to develop levels of performance.
7 Assessment and Recording
7.1 Teachers assess children’s work in PE by making dynamic assessments as they observe them during lessons. They informally record the progress made by children against the learning objectives to inform planning for the next lesson.
7.2 During a half-term unit of work teachers will assess pupil progress. They record this information, using it to both plan future work for each child and inform the teacher in the next year group. This way, activities aren’t repeated and the new teacher has an accurate gauge of their pupils’ capabilities. These records also enable the teacher to make an annual assessment of progress for each child for PE as a whole. This forms part of the child’s annual report to parents.
8 Resources
8.1 There is a wide range of resources to support the teaching of P.E. across the school. We keep most of our small equipment in the PE store in the hall, and this is accessible to children only under adult supervision. The hall contains a range of large apparatus, and we expect the children to help set up and put away this equipment as part of their work. By so doing, the children learn to handle equipment safely. The children use the school field and playground for games and athletics activities and the local swimming pool for swimming lessons.
8.2 P.E. resources are reviewed annually, to evaluate what is required and to ensure that existing resources are well-maintained.
9 Health and Safety
9.1 The general teaching requirement for health and safety applies in this subject. We encourage the children to consider their own safety and the safety of others at all times. Children come to school dressed in their P.E. kits on their P.E. day. The governing body expects the teachers to set a good example by wearing appropriate clothing when teaching P.E. The policy of the governing body is that no jewellery is to be worn for any physical activity and that long hair is tied back.
10 Monitoring and Review
10.1 The monitoring of the standards of children’s work and of the quality of teaching in P.E. is the responsibility of the P.E. subject leader. The work of the subject leader also involves supporting colleagues in the teaching of P.E., being informed about current developments in the subject, and providing a strategic lead and direction for the subject in the school. The P.E. subject leader gives the headteacher an annual summary report in which s/he evaluates the strengths and weaknesses in the subject and indicates areas for further improvement. The P.E. subject leader has specially-allocated, management time in order to review evidence of the children’s work and undertake lesson observations of P.E. teaching across the school.
10.2 Children from each cohort are consulted on a regular basis, along with members of the school council, to gauge the popularity of PE and their opinions on current provision in school. These meetings are crucial to advise the subject leader, when it comes to planning resource purchase and the curriculum offer.
11 Extra-Curricular Activities
11.1 The school provides a wide range of P.E.-related activities for children, before, during and at the end of the school day. These encourage children to further develop their skills in a range of the activities. The school sends details of the current club activities to parents at the beginning of each half-term. The school also plays regular fixtures against other local schools. This introduces a competitive element to team games and allows the children to put into practice the skills that they have developed in their lessons. These opportunities foster a sense of team spirit and co-operation amongst our children.
