Physical Education
At St Catherine's, we are passionate about providing a comprehensive and engaging Physical Education (PE) curriculum that fosters not only physical skills but also a lifelong love for active living. Understanding the significance of physical health and well-being, our approach ensures that every child enjoys at least two hours of high-quality PE each week. With a dedicated PE specialist leading our curriculum, we are committed to delivering a dynamic and diverse range of activities that cater to the varied interests and abilities of our children.
Our curriculum is designed to facilitate the holistic development of each child, promoting not only physical competencies but also social skills, teamwork, and resilience. Through a blend of traditional sports and innovative activities, we aim to inspire our children to embrace an active lifestyle, both within and beyond the school environment. We believe that by embedding a strong foundation in physical education, we are not just developing athletes but nurturing healthy, well-rounded individuals who will thrive in every aspect of life.
Intent
At St Catherine’s Primary School we recognise the importance of Physical Education (P.E.) in a child’s physical, cognitive, social and emotional development as well as the role it can play in a child’s spiritual, moral and cultural development. We are committed to supporting the health and wellbeing of our children and understand the impact physical activity and sport has on this. We want all children to experience a wide variety of sports and physical skills which will enhance life-long fitness and life choices.
We provide a broad and balanced P.E. curriculum to aid children’s increasing self-confidence in their ability to manage themselves and their bodies within a variety of movement situations. A balance of individual, team, co-operative and competitive activities aims to cater for individual children’s needs and abilities. Our curriculum is based on progressive learning objectives which, combined with varied and flexible teaching styles, endeavour to provide appropriate, stimulating, challenging and enjoyable learning situation for all children. The curriculum aims to teach children to cope with both success and failure in competitive, individual and team based physical activities as well as promote an understanding of the many benefits of exercise, through a balanced range of relevant activities.
In addition to the importance placed on P.E. lessons we also have a wider curriculum offer which includes the opportunities for children to take part in extra-curricular sports and activity clubs and competitions. Daily physical activity and health enhancing activities also play a crucial role in our offer to children including active lessons, active break and lunchtimes and extra-curricular activities.
Implementation
Teaching of PE
Children within EYFS undertake daily physical exercise within their teaching unit, through continuous provision and participate in a morning run. They also have access structured activities at least once a week, where the Complete PE scheme is used to develop areas of fundamental movement.
In KS1 the curriculum focuses on fundamental key skills to develop early stages of tactical awareness and physical fitness elements of agility, balance and coordination through the introduction. Curriculum content includes ball skills and team games, gymnastic and dance activities. Children are introduced to early stages of games, gymnastics, dance, outdoor and adventurous and athletics.
At KS2 pupils continue to apply and develop a range of skills to enable them to become successful team players, dancers, gymnasts and athletes. We also enrich children’s experiences through opportunities for outdoor and adventurous activities.
Through our provision children can aim to flourish at sports in which they have a particular interest or flair for. Children with additional needs are provided with appropriate support to enable them to take part and gain confidence in skills, understanding and motivation.
Wider Curriculum offer
Children at St Catherine’s are given the opportunity to join a range of extracurricular activities both during lunchtimes and after school. They range from traditional sports such as football and netball, and other sports such as fencing and karate, to non-competitive physical activity clubs including cheerleading. Children are given the opportunity to compete at various levels including personal best challenges in school and other intraschool challenges between houses, year groups and classes. We take part in many School Games events and hold the Gold level School Games Mark for our participation in competitive sport. To ensure as many children as possible access our wider curriculum offer, registers are monitored closely.
Daily physical activity/ Active learning
We aim to embed 15 minutes of physical activity throughout the school day in addition to twice weekly PE sessions. Children are provided with opportunities over the school day to become physically active within the curriculum, including use of Teach Active resources for Maths and English. Lessons that include elements of physical activity are active times tables’ sessions and our forest school provision. Children are provided with opportunities to have “brain breaks” throughout the school day through the use of initiatives such as Golden Km, mindfulness, 5-a-day TV and dance activities. Our active lunchtime initiative enables children to become physically active through the various equipment which is available for the children in the playground. We encourage our children to learning to skip, hula hoop or beat their own personal bests during this time.
Impact
As a result of a strong Physical Education curriculum and wider curriculum offer, St Catherine’s leavers will:
- Become skilful and intelligent performers
- Acquire and develop skills, performing with increasing physical awareness
- Learn how to select and apply skills, tactics and compositional ideas to suit activities that need different approaches and ways of thinking
- Develop their ideas in different ways
- Set targets for themselves and compete against others
- Understand what it takes to persevere, succeed and acknowledge others’ success
- Respond to a variety of challenges
- Take the initiative, lead activity and focus on improving performances
- Develop competence to excel in a broad range of physical activities
- Lead healthy, active lives
- Develop positive attitudes to participation in physical activity
- Engage in competitive sports and activities
- Embed values like fairness and respect