PE

Intent

At Saint Joseph’s, we strive to create a culture which aims to inspire an active generation to enjoy PE, encourage each other and achieve. We provide a safe and supportive environment for children to flourish in a range of different physical activities, which is essential in promoting positive physical, emotional, spiritual, social and moral development. All children have the opportunity to enjoy being physically active, maintain a healthy lifestyle and using the medium of sport, increase their self-esteem. We aspire for children to adopt a positive mind-set and believe anything can be achieved with determination, resilience and sportsmanship. The aim of Physical Education is to promote physical activity and healthy lifestyles. Children are encouraged to practice fair play, good sporting behaviour and honest competition as individual participants, which in turn embeds life-long values such as co-operation and teamwork. We have also diversified our PE curriculum to ensure a wide range of sports and cultures are available to our children. In following with our School Improvement Plan, we make sure that speaking and listening is a key component in PE, which enables children to model skills, give feedback and use necessary vocabulary during and after lessons. At Saint Joseph’s, we aim for all of our children to develop the necessary knowledge and skills which will have a constructive impact on their long-term health and well-being.

Our PE curriculum aims to:

Provide high quality, inclusive and diverse PE lessons
Improve well-being by making strong links with PSHE
Increase teacher’s confidence, skills and knowledge of the PE curriculum.
Increase physical activity throughout the school.
Enhance parents and children’s knowledge of healthy eating and lifestyles.
Promote teamwork, co-operation and sportsmanship.
Give children the opportunity to compete in events throughout the borough.
Allow efficient time for oracy skills to be weaved through lessons.

Implementation

The PE curriculum is taught through the use of ‘The PE Network', which is in-line with the National Curriculum, and is used to aid teaching staff in their subject knowledge and planning of PE. Teachers are able to adjust and change lessons to suit the needs of their classes but the scheme provides a strong basis of what is expected in each year group.

Each class has access to a one-hour high quality CPD sessions taken by coaches from ‘Top Marks Sports’ whereby teachers co-teach, observe, are observed and given feedback on their lessons. These coaches are here to help upskill the class teachers so that in the future, they will have all the knowledge and skills to provide top quality lessons by themselves should this funding no longer be available. We focus on increasing the children’s activity levels while decreasing teacher talk. Through the use of coaches and teachers, we can deliver fun, knowledgeable and skilful lessons in which the children can achieve. The class teachers themselves lead the second hour of PE a week. This in turn means teachers gain confidence and apply knowledge from CPD while the children improve skills and increase their activity levels.

To diversify our curriculum, we have introduced Afro-Caribbean dance and we teach diverse sports from various communities including Hockey (stems from Canada), Tennis (originated in France), Gymnastics (Greece) and Dance (Africa/ Caribbean). We also organise for athletes to lead a workshop for our children to help inspire and create awareness for men and women of all cultures in sport.

Each year, children in Key Stage 2 take part in a 6-week swimming programme with the exception of year 6 who take part in a 12-week intensive programme, providing them with the skills and knowledge for water sports and to learn about water safety. Year 6 also take part in a half term of kayaking and sailing in Summer 2, enabling them to build on the prior skills taught in swimming sessions in previous years.

The whole school takes part in the ‘Active Mile’ initiative which encourages the children to run or walk for 15 minutes daily. Taking part gives children the opportunity to be outdoor, be physically active and also aids concentration in the classroom.

We offer a wide range of sporting after-school clubs run by both teaching staff and outside agencies: Top Marks Coaching, Millwall coaching and dance teachers. These activities include fencing, cricket, football, dance, gymnastics and multi-sports etc. which provide children with more skills, knowledge and physical activity throughout the week. Clubs are changed every term to give all classes the chance to participate in a range of different sports and cater to all abilities.

Through the ‘The PE and School Sports Network’, we are given the opportunity to take part in many different competitions which take place throughout the borough. Inter and Intra events take place throughout the year and each year group will be given opportunities to take part in competitive sports. We also take part in mindfulness/yoga sessions as well as healthy eating workshops for both children and parents giving our community the chance to improve their lifestyle choices.

Impact

Our curriculum is designed carefully to show progression of skills from nursery up to year 6. Our yearly overviews ensure that each aspect of the national curriculum is being taught in depth and that prior skills are being developed continuously. To measure this we follow methods such as:

Formative assessment throughout each lesson.
Summative assessment at the beginning and the end of a unit.
Pupil questioning and discussions