Curriculum Rationale
Physical Education enables children to foster a love of being physically active and understand the benefits and importance of being active for life.
Intent
At St John Fisher, we are committed to ensuring that all children access and participate in a broad and balanced PE curriculum. This is done through careful planning and scaffolding using our SPP resources to ensure that all children, including SEND, EHCPs, English as an additional language or those children who are gifted and talented are included and engaged. We aim to ensure that all children foster a love of being physically active and understand the benefits and importance of being active for life. We hope that all pupils can find an aspect of physical activity that they enjoy and wish to develop into adulthood. We aim to do this by delivering weekly high-quality teaching and learning opportunities, both indoors and outdoors, that inspire all children to succeed in physical education and in developing life skills. Our ambitious PE curriculum aims to provide pupils with the key knowledge they need to achieve the necessary skills across the PE curriculum. Pupils will be given the opportunity to build on prior knowledge, allowing them to know more, and remember more. At St John Fisher, our PE curriculum is progressive year-on-year from Early Years Foundation Stage to the end of Year 6, and beyond to Key Stage 3. We aim for all children to be physically active for sustained periods of time and be able to make informed decisions about healthy lifestyles, a balanced diet, positive growth mind-set and the resilience to persevere with activities that may have once felt too difficult to achieve. Swimming is an important life skill so we aspire for all children to leave St John Fisher being able to swim at least 25 metres and with an understanding of the importance of water safety. We also aim to teach children how to cooperate and collaborate with others as part of an effective team, understanding fairness and equity of play to embed life-long British Values.
Implementation
Our PE curriculum provides challenging and enjoyable learning through a range of sporting activities including; invasion games, net & wall games, strike and field games, gymnastics, dance, swimming and outdoor & adventure. Fundamental skills are built on throughout the year groups to ensure that all children develop the confidence, tolerance and appreciation of their own and others’ strengths and weaknesses. Each child receives one and three-quarter hours of curriculum PE time on a weekly basis which is carefully planned and mapped out to ensure a broad and full range of skills and activities are being covered. These sessions are either delivered by specialist coaches or class teachers during PE lessons. A small group of Year 5 children are invited to become Sports Leaders for the school. They develop into sporting role models for the younger children, assisting with lunch-time clubs, our annual Sports day and any other sporting activities. We also provide opportunities for all children to engage in extra-curricular activities after school, in addition to a range of competitive sporting events within the local area which are always well attended. We recognise that all children have diverse abilities and ensure that all lessons and extra-curricular activities are differentiated to promote an inclusive approach, which endeavours to encourage not only physical development but also the well-being of all pupils.
