At Tanfield Lea Primary School, we believe that high quality Physical Education and School Sport play a vital role in the physical, social, emotional and intellectual development of all children. We believe that our high-quality PE curriculum inspires our children to succeed and excel in competitive sport and other physically demanding activities. Furthermore, it provides opportunities for our children to become physically confident and make a positive impact on their own health and well-being.
Before arriving at our school, our children have varying experiences participating in physical activity and sports. Therefore, the PE curriculum at Tanfield Lea aspires to provide opportunities to build children’s self-confidence, self-esteem, teamwork, perseverance and leadership skills through an ability to manage themselves successfully in a variety of situations. At our school, in EYFS and KS1, children have the opportunity to systematically develop their competence across the fundamental movement skills to create a solid foundation. This is then built upon in KS2 to ensure that our children develop motor competence by the time they leave our school. However, we understand that it takes more than motor competence to be successful at participating in a sporting activity. This is why we emphasise the importance of rules, strategies and tactics for a range of activities throughout our curriculum and children are able to practice their fundamental movement skills. This helps our children to develop their competence to participate in various sporting activities.
PE is a vocabulary-rich subject, including specific scientific terminology as well as informal terms that are more sport related. Key vocabulary in PE is introduced at the earliest age and is consolidated and embedded across the different year groups. Due to the variety of class sizes at our school, PE units are taught on a 2-year cycle, in half termly blocks, and the children participate in high quality PE and sporting activities, incorporating a variety of carefully chosen physical activities including: games, dance, gymnastics, swimming and athletics. These activities are carried out in a safe and supportive environment, where effort and hard work, as well as success, is celebrated. This is achieved by children participating in engaging lessons with effective adaptations, using the STEP approach, to ensure that all children can be successful.
At our school, we believe in opening doors and enriching the lives of our children and that our cultural capital opportunities are vital in educating the whole child. We enrich our Physical Education curriculum by providing opportunities for children to participate in competitive sport, festivals and extra-curricular clubs before, during and after school. Competitive sport involves children competing both within our school and against other schools in a variety of sports, whereas festivals and extra-curricular clubs take an inclusive approach, which encourage motor competence as well as health and wellbeing. In addition to this, the children in Years 5 and 6 are given the opportunity to attend residential trips to Grinton Lodge (Yorkshire Dales) and Howtown (Lake District) to participate in essential outdoor and adventurous activities.
We understand the vital role that PE can play in ensuring that pupils lead a healthy, active life beyond PE lessons. Due to this, we explicitly teach the relationship between health and exercise as well as how to perform appropriate activities for health benefits. This allows our children to make informed decisions about their own levels of exercise and develop a positive attitude towards sport and physical activity. We have also introduced 3 enrichment days, where children participate in various activities throughout the year, linked to healthy living, disability awareness and sporting activities. During these days, the children develop a deeper awareness of their own health and wellbeing as well as the health and wellbeing of those around them. This is in preparation to live a happy and healthy life as well as inspiring our children to study Physical Education to a high standard. This can include career goals within: military careers, personal training, healthcare professionals, sports coaching, teaching and professional sportspeople.
To ensure that children are at the required standard, the Subject Coordinator monitors the high-quality Physical Education at our school by close discussion with colleagues and sports coaches and lesson observations. Furthermore, to ensure children are prepared for their next steps in education, the Subject Coordinator has developed the schools Physical Education Progression map (see below) and has attended County PE conferences to remain up to date with current matters.
At Tanfield Lea Primary, we have worked extremely hard to develop PE and school sport, which has been recognised and has led to us achieving the Gold Sainsbury’s School Games Mark. In addition, we have achieved the Active 30 Award for children participating in 30 minutes of physical activity each day.
Subject Area Progression Map
PE Curriculum Progression Document
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