The purpose for teaching Physical Education
At Eastfield Primary School, physical education, activity and competitive sport play a key role in the education and development of our children. We aim to provide all pupils with a variety of opportunities to develop their skills, knowledge and confidence. As a school, we want children to build and develop skills through a wide range of games and competitions including: football, netball, cross country, athletics, dance and gymnastics.
We understand that for children to be well-rounded, confident and successful individuals, they should be given the opportunity to consistently strive to be the best they can be. This is supported by lessons being purposeful, which allow them to develop a range of problem solving and team skills and a variety of after-school activities help to embed physical activity into the school curriculum.
Our vision is for all pupils to be active as much as possible throughout the school day, we want children to be active learners and regular exercise can help support this.
The teaching and learning of Physical Education
We recognise that a child’s early development of key skills such as: agility, balance and coordination, running, jumping, throwing and catching is fundamental to them becoming skilful and confident learners in KS2 and beyond so we explicitly teach these throughout a child’s time in EYFS and KS1. Once these skills have been developed and practised, they are taught to apply them in a range of activities and team games.
We continue to develop and build on these skills throughout KS2. These skills are then applied to team games such as: hockey, football, cricket, netball and dodgeball. This change into team sports allows children to continue to craft their understanding of skills but within a competitive environment. This also teaches them how to experience both winning and losing. An important skill to learn as they become a more reflective learner.
Through our character counts, we aim to encourage children to become honest, resilient, positive, respectful and to show sportsmanship. We appreciate that all children develop at different stages, so we try to make sure that all children have the opportunity to reach the same ending point before they move on to their further education.
We have developed a culture of PE by ensuring children have active break and lunch times as well as providing active blasts such as: wake and shake and the daily mile.
As a result of this, we are continuously developing the leadership in upper KS2 and we aim to train pupils to be confident in delivering games and activities during lunchtime. We understand that children need to understand the importance of being physically healthy and active and our aim is to develop this understanding through cross-curricular learning.
We monitor the skills that our children show during lessons and respond to these in our next sessions. Children show a love of learning in PE lessons and demonstrate they are engaged and confident in trying new things and succeeding.
Our PE lessons are supported by Marvel education, who offer high-quality targeted CPD to our staff. The structure of our curriculum is based around a responsive 2 year cycle and we believe it not only helps develop the skills needed to succeed but it also develops connections and knowledge across a range of sports.
We currently offer a range of extra-curricular activities at Eastfield.We are also pleased to have developed partnerships with outside providers and we currently offer seven after school sports clubs. These range from Archery to Dance to Basketball. Please see Arbor for more information.
The outcomes of our Physical Education curriculum
Our broad range of topics taught during PE lessons allows pupils to take part in sports they haven’t participated in before, providing them with the tools to try new things head on and not shy away from challenges. Our yearly overview has been created to help children build on the previous year’s skills.
The staff and students at Eastfield have worked alongside a PE specialist to improve the teaching and learning, assessment and subject knowledge of PE and we now teach the new skills needed for these sports.
Across the school, pupils are more active, particularly during break and lunchtimes and that the impact of KS2 playground leaders, who are providing KS1 pupils with new games and activities will continue to contributed to this.
Our extra-curricular offer provides rich and varied opportunities for children to take place in competitive and non-competitive sport and this will continue to grow over the academic year.
