Intent

At St Mary’s, our intent is to provide a high-quality Physical Education (PE) curriculum that promotes the physical, social, emotional and mental wellbeing of all pupils. We believe that PE plays a vital role in helping students achieve their full potential and strive to create a culture that inspires children to enjoy being physically active. Our curriculum supports pupils to encourage each other and know how to be healthy so they are confident and physically active members of the community. Our progressive, sequenced units are designed to develop essential skills, improve fitness levels and foster a lifelong love of physical activity in a safe, welcoming and inclusive environment.

Children will participate in competitive sport against both themselves and others. We encourage them to implement the school’s values of Kindness, Courage and Trust to all sporting and physical activities as well as ensuring they understand the principles of fairness, sportsmanship and respect – values we hope to embed for future life.

At St Mary’s, we also understand that swimming is an important life skill so this is offered to Years 1 to 6 on an annual basis. We aspire for all children to leave us having met at least the minimum requirements set out in the National Curriculum.

Implement

We achieve our intent through the effective implementation of the ‘Sports for Kids’ (S4K) curriculum. This scheme is used to deliver lessons from Reception to Year 6 and shows progression through the key stages. It meets the needs of all pupils, ensuring children are taught a broad and balanced curriculum, covering a range of sporting skills, activities, dance and gymnastics. We ensure that the curriculum is delivered consistently and effectively using the S4K app by skilled and well-trained teachers and coaches who are supported by appropriate resources, including equipment, facilities and technology. We encourage pupils to take ownership of their learning and offer opportunities for them to progress at their own pace and level of ability. We also promote healthy competition and collaboration to foster healthy relationships and teamwork.

PE Curriculum at St Mary’s

At St Mary’s, Reception children are taught one lesson of PE each week as well as being given the opportunity to access PE resources through continuous provision. In Key Stage 1 and 2, children are taught two lessons of PE each week; one outdoors and one indoors.

In Reception, the focus is on developing fine and gross motor skills to work towards the Development Matters objectives also allowing them to explore spatial awareness and self-safety. It lays the foundations for accessing the Key Stage 1 Curriculum.

In Key Stage 1, the focus is on inspiring pupils to develop core motor skills, become increasingly competent and confident in physical activity and offer a broad range of opportunities to develop fundamental movement skills. Each games programme focusses on fundamental movement skills and multi-skills rather than sport specific activities.

The PE Games programme includes:

• Team Games
• Athletic Activities (Run, Jump and Throw)
• Ball Skills (Throw, Catch, Pass, Deliver; Hands or Feet)
• Bat and Ball Skills (Hand/Eye Co-ordination)
• Gymnastics and Dance

At Key Stage 2, the PE Curriculum reflects the main aims of the KS1 PE Curriculum but pupils now follow a sport specific pathway, applying the skills learnt in KS1. The S4K curriculum ensures that key curriculum objectives are achieved:

• Pupils implement and develop a broad range of skills, learning how to use them in different ways and to link them to make actions and sequences of movement
• Pupils enjoy communicating, collaborating and competing with each other
• They develop an understanding of how to succeed in different activities and sports and learn how to evaluate and recognise their own success

Each year group in KS2 will take part in the sporting activities below, with a clear progression of skills throughout the years.

• Invasion Games: Football, Rugby, Netball, Hockey
• Striking and Fielding: Cricket and Rounders
• Net and Wall Games: Tennis
• Athletic Activities: Running, jumping and throwing activities
• Dance: Swing, Flamenco, African, Bollywood, Musical Theatre and Haka
• Gymnastics: Floor and Apparatus Based

Enrichment

At St Mary’s, we believe that being able to offer our children a wide range of diverse, extra-curricular activities is important as it encourages them to become independent, confident and successful members of the community. It also provides opportunity for our aspirational sports people. Some of our clubs relating to PE are run by S4K, as well as staff, and take place after school.

The list of sporting clubs changes termly but can include:

• Football
• Netball
• Cricket
• Multi sports
• Hockey
• Laser run
• Dodgeball
• Athletics
• Rounders

Throughout the year, sporting competitions are offered to all children both in and out of school. This includes between year groups, key stages, houses and other schools.

Assessment

The S4K PE app allows staff to assess children on the key learning objectives for each lesson as well as reward positive behaviours. During each lesson, the children are introduced to the key learning objective in line with three characters:

The characters are designed to engage children in the journey that takes place when they try to learn a new skill – in sport and beyond. The learning objectives of the lesson are explained alongside the journey that children will take to achieve the outcome. Midway through the lesson, a student led learning check takes place where children will categorise themselves as either Hawksey or Sherwood level, which allows differentiation to take place in the final activity of the lesson.