PE

Intent – what do we want to deliver?

At Market Drayton Junior School, we are committed to providing our children with a Physical Education curriculum that has a clear intention and clearly meets the needs of all children in our care.

The aims of the National Curriculum for Physical Education are:

• develop competence to excel in a broad range of physical activities;
• are physically active for sustained periods of time;
• engage in competitive sports and activities;
• lead healthy, active lives.

Our Physical Education Road Map, clearly sets out the journey our children undertake from Reception right through to the end of KS2. It also outlines how the children will progress with their learning once they embark on their KS3 journey. As we are aware from Market Drayton Infant School, our children arrive in Year 3 with varied backgrounds in terms of experiences, SEND and EAL. We also have a large proportion of Pupil Premium children on role.

Our intent is to ensure that we provide ALL children with a high quality Physical Education curriculum that is broad and balanced and meets the needs of all learners. Each year, the children will have an opportunity to participate and develop skills in the following areas: Dance, Gymnastics, Invasion Games, Net and Wall Games, Strike and Field Games, Athletics and Swimming. The bespoke design of our curriculum ensures that all elements of the National Curriculum are covered as well as including a wealth of alternative sports to broaden the children’s experiences and skill development.

The Alternative Sports that we offer are: Tri Golf, Arrows Archery, New Age Kurling (NAK), Boccia, Skipping and Hoola Hooping. Whatever the pursuit, sport offers essential relaxation and helps to maintain fitness and vigour, self-esteem and confidence. Our aim is to promote the importance of Physical Education and Physical Activity to ensure that our children become life-long learners that develop and maintain healthy and active lifestyles as they progress onto their next stage.

Our curriculum offer goes beyond the usual curriculum and enables our children to become a deep learner by developing not only the physical skills of PE through an activity or sport but also by developing their thinking skills, communication, leadership, problem solving and social behaviours. As a result, our children become creative, curious and resilient individuals.

Physical Education is a statutory subject and therefore the children have an entitlement to two hours of Physical Education per week plus extra-curricular sports activities both during and after school. Physical Education is the only subject where we teach through the physical and therefore this is a key driver in our curriculum intent. Physical Education also makes a huge contribution to physical and mental wellbeing, which we recognise in various events within our sporting calendar.

Implementation – How do we deliver the Physical Education Curriculum?

Planning for Physical Education is a process which all staff, as well as our coaches, ActivSports, are involved in to ensure that there is consistency in delivery and approach to ensure that the school provides full coverage of the National Curriculum, whilst broadening this to ensure that we cater for the needs of all individuals including groups of children such as SEND, FSM and Gifted and Talented.

The teaching is based upon a rolling programme of Physical Education units which ensure that skills are revisited, prior development and vocabulary are built on and the application of skills into game situations is developed as the children progress through the school. Each Physical Education lesson has a skill focus which clearly builds on the previous session. The lesson focus is explicit and we utilise a range of sports as a vehicle to teach that particular skill within the session to provide children with the knowledge and understanding that skills can be applied across a range of sports and activities. We ensure that we have a balanced curriculum offer that includes Physical Education, Physical Activity and competitive School Sport.

Special Education Needs in Physical Education – how do we ensure that all children can access our PE lessons?

Effective quality first teaching is our key driver to enabling all children to participate and progress their skills in Physical Education. Differentiation within lessons is a vital component to ensure that there is an equal balance of support and challenge for all children. Challenge and support within Physical Education might include: varying the type of equipment used e.g. cricket bat instead of Rounders bat to increase the surface area, larger ball if working on catching and sensory balls that make a noise to cater for all areas of SEND. Support can also be provided by teachers, TAs and peers. We also ensure that children have the opportunity to lead and officiate games within the Physical Education curriculum as this develops a wealth of skills and understanding.

Furthermore, our competition calendar also has opportunities for pupils on the SEND register to take part in competitive sport. There is a Sportsability festival each term which is organised by the School Games. Anyone on the SEND register can take part and this is something that they really look forward to being a part of. We also have a range of children on the SEND register who take part in other sporting competitions.

Our Physical Education curriculum has also been designed to offer a balance of traditional sports, such as netball, tag rugby and tennis, but also enriched by the introduction of non-traditional, inclusive sports, such as Boccia, Tri-Golf and Archery. This enables all children, not just SEND, the opportunity to experience a wide variety of sports and activities and develop a range of skills. It also enables us to broaden children’s outlook in terms of different sports that are offer to them which instils that desire and motivation to try something new.

The following topics are covered:

Underpinning our Physical Education curriculum are the six School Games Values:

We believe that these six values identify what school sport should be about.

Impact – how do we measure the progress of our Physical Education curriculum?

Assessment of Physical Education is largely based on formative assessment of skills within each lesson. However, we also assess the children’s progress at the end of each Key Stage. We follow skills based planning and Sport is used as a vehicle to deliver this.

Our planning has an explicit lesson objective for each session which is shared with the children at the start of a lesson and then revisited again at the end of the lesson. The lesson sequence is then broken down into two main parts (skill development and application of the skill). Teachers make formative judgements during the lesson using the Assessment for Learning questions outlined on the planning and adapt activities where necessary using differentiation. A final judgement can then be made at the end of each lesson which then informs the next session and how progression of skills can be maintained. Children also have the opportunity to self-assess based on their personal best and peer assessment as well.

Planning is progressive so that skills become more challenging as the children move through the school although the sports used to deliver the skills will remain consistent to ensure that we continue to offer a board and balanced curriculum for all children.

At the end of each Key Stage, children are assessed against the National Curriculum to identify whether they are working Below, Towards, Expected or Greater Depth. This assessment takes place in Year 4 and Year 6.

Personal Challenges

Throughout the year we have opportunities for the children to strive to beat their personal best. This is also a good use of formative and self-assessment for the children. All children have access to the Daily Mile and they record their times at least termly to see if they have beaten their best time. We also have Wellbeing activities termly, for example, skipping, HoolaHooping and Chest Passes where the children can challenge themselves to improve on their previous score. This encourages a healthy competitiveness amongst the children themselves.

In addition to our Physical Education curriculum and Physical Activity opportunities, we also assess the children for upcoming competitions linked to the School Games. During lessons, children are identified and offered the opportunity to attend trial sessions for team selection. We are fortunate to be able to select A, B and C teams for most competitions which ensures that more children are having access to competitive sport.

Sports Premium

Further to assessing our Physical Education curriculum, we also thoroughly track the impact of our Sports Premium. We have ensured that each year we have built upon the strengths from previous years and strived to create a sustainable PE and School Sport offer for our school. All of our funding action plans can be found here: Funding reports .

Click on the links below to see the curriculum offer and skill development for each area of Physical Education:

In addition to the National Curriculum coverage, we also have a wide range of alternative sports which offer the children a board and balanced Physical Education curriculum.

We are fortunate to have extensive School Grounds consisting of a large field, marked out with various Sporting areas such as lanes for Athletics and pitches for Football, Cricket and Rounders. We also have a large playground which has markings for Tennis and Netball courts.

Our Indoor facilities offer a large hall with wall bars, ropes, Gymnastics equipment and a sound system for Dance. In addition to the sports facilities, we also have a separate changing rooms for boys and girls located on the playground plus three large sports equipment storage areas. We have a vast array of sports equipment enabling us to deliver high quality PE lessons to every child.

We also have a Daily Mile track spanning the perimeter of our school field which the children use at lunchtime, during their games lessons (as a warm up) and also to complete their personal challenges each day. Children are provided with the opportunity to complete the daily mile at least once per day.

Wellbeing

Skipping

Skipping is a fundamental skill that most children come up to KS2 having achieved but we recognise that it is an important skill for children to master, therefore teachers plan in time for children to practise skipping throughout the year. This also forms one of our Wellbeing Challenges that we run termly.

Hoola Hooping

In 2019-2020 we received staff training from HoolaNation. All classes worked with Sasha three times over the course of the year to develop their Hoola Hooping skills. Sessions were engaging and challenging and children learnt a lot of exciting tricks to perform with a HoolaHoop, as well as gaining valuable knowledge about the importance of keeping active and leading a healthy lifestyle. Using our sport premium we purchased a class set of hoops that the children can use in their PE or Wellbeing sessions.

Residential Visits and Extra-Curricular Opportunities

Children in years 4 and 6 have the opportunity to attend an annual residential visit, where they take part in outdoor and adventurous activities, which are organised and supervised by qualified members of site staff. Year 4 go to the Conway Centre on Anglesey for three days and Year 6 head to Arthog for five days. 

Children have the opportunity to spend time using a climbing wall which we have erected on the school field in the summer term.

In addition to PE and Sport provision within the school day we also offer a wealth of extracurricular activities and after school clubs. ActivSports run two after school clubs per week as well as holiday clubs using our school facilities. They also run lunchtime clubs where teams have the opportunity to practise for upcoming competitions. We also have teachers that run various after school clubs throughout the year such as football, cricket, netball and rugby. This is an area that we are continually developing through the use of pupil voice.

Coaches

All year groups have the opportunity to work with a range of different sports coaches throughout the year. We have ActivSports in weekly to work with the children and develop staff CPD as well as Shrewsbury Town who run a Reading the Game session in Year 5, twice a year for six weeks.

In addition to this, we also have good links with Nick Williams who is a Tennis coach and he works with Year 4 children in the summer term in preparation for the mini red tennis competition which is part of our competition calendar.

Throughout the year, children also come into contact with sports coaches from different areas when we take part in the School Games competitions which they referee/umpire. Children are then signposted to local clubs outside of school.

Swimming

Our school follows the ‘Take School Swimming Seriously’ scheme by implementing the ASA’s School Swimming Charter. We have joined in partnership with The National Governing body for swimming, the ASA, to help every one of our pupils become confident and capable swimmers. Swimming is an essential life-saving skill that every child has a right to learn and by launching the School Swimming Charter we want to show that we are dedicated to making our school swimming lessons the best they can be. 

Our swimming curriculum ensures that all children can:

• Swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25m
• Use a range of strokes effectively such as front crawl, backstroke and breaststroke
• Perform safe self-rescue in different water based situations.
   

We provide ten weeks of swimming for all pupils in Years 3 and 4. The expectation is that all children must be able to swim at least 25m by the end of KS2. Any children who do not meet this requirement will be provided with extra swimming sessions at the beginning of the Autumn term. Children who have already met this target will still have swimming provision as we strongly believe that the further you can swim the more competent and confident you will be, thus improving your overall water safety.