Physical Education
Intent
The head/hands/heart model is central to PE at Harpole Primary School. PE, sport, fitness and wellbeing are vital parts of the school’s curriculum, which develop a need for healthy life-styles, a balanced diet, positive growth mind-set and the resilience to persevere with activities that may feel too difficult. We are passionate about the need to teach children how to cooperate and collaborate with others, as part of a team, understanding fairness and equity of play to embed life-long values.
Harpole Primary School aims to develop a fun, high-quality physical education curriculum that inspires all pupils to succeed and excel individual abilities in competitive sports and other physically-demanding activities. We will provide opportunities for pupils to become physically confident in a way which supports their health and fitness. Our children will have opportunities to compete in sport and other activities that build character and help to embed values such as fairness and respect.
Through a rich legacy of investment in competitive games, we have chosen three core sports as ‘golden threads’ in our PE curriculum to encourage progression in skills across the whole school: Tag Rugby, Hockey and Cricket.
An Inclusive Curriculum
Child Initiated Learning
Our topic-based curriculum is designed to enable children to initiate and drive their own learning. The potential for overlap and revisiting topics should never be seen as a hinderance in responding to the direct opportunities presented by our pupils. By allowing teachers to have the freedom to embrace the pupil voice in their classrooms, learning is a fluid and dynamic process that blends with direct teaching of new content skills and knowledge and actively promotes curiosity and exploration of ideas and facts.
Equality, Diversity & Inclusion
Our topic-based curriculum allows pupils to build a body of knowledge and skills with links and connections to themselves as individuals and the world around them. We believe that our curriculum should reflect the very fabric of the society in which we live; being both a window into other contexts and worlds and a mirror of our own. It enables us to validate and embrace a range of family structures, backgrounds and self-identity.
Special Educational Needs
At Harpole Primary School, our intention for special educational and/or disabilities (SEND) is to ensure that all our children receive a high quality and ambitious education regardless of need, disability or disadvantage. We believe that it is vital our pupils are equipped with the tools needed to become independent, inquisitive learners both in and out the classroom in order to be prepared for life. We will ensure that our lessons are accessible to all pupils through differentiation of resources and questions. Resources will also be adapted to ensure that all children’s needs are met.
Pupil Premium & “Disadvantaged”
Harpole Primary School does not recognise the term “disadvantaged” as a means to describe pupils supported through the Pupil Premium Grant funding or other identification measures.
At Harpole Primary School our ultimate objective for our pupils supported with additional Pupil Premium Grant (PPG) funding is the same for all our pupils.
Our intention is that all pupils, irrespective of their background or the challenges they face, make good progress and become resourceful, independent thinkers with the resilience and confidence to adapt to change and rise to challenges. The focus of our curriculum is to support all pupils to achieve that goal.
At Harpole Primary School our curriculum takes a holistic whole child approach to supporting pupils and their needs. High-quality class teaching combined with strong pastoral support is at the heart of our approach, with a focus on areas (academic, social, emotional, mental health, well-being and safeguarding) in which disadvantaged pupils require the most support.
By implementing high quality teaching and strong pastoral support, we acknowledge that our strategies, support the wellbeing and good mental health of all our pupils.
Implementation
Sport and the teaching of PE at Harpole Primary School is purposeful. In collaboration with the Sports Teaching Assistant and Legacy, teachers plan sequences of lessons that build upon previously taught skills so that children are challenged from the outset with a view to striving for the very best outcomes possible.
Through our progressive gymnastics and dance curriculum, children across the school are given opportunities to develop their strength, flexibility, balance, agility, control, coordination and technique in ways which do not undermine the creativity of the discipline. Individual and group choreography is encouraged in a safe and meaningful way to allow our children to ‘invent’ routines and take pride in the presentation of their creative outcomes, while also retaining a focus on the development of key gross motor skills.
Sport and games at Harpole Primary School are driven (though not exclusively) by the golden threads of Tag Rugby, Hockey and Cricket in line with the seasons. In KS1, children will learn, develop and master the basic skills of running, jumping, throwing and catching alongside the fine and gross motor skills associated with the various equipment related to each sport. This will be taught alongside the positive values of teamwork, collaboration and what it takes to be good winners and losers, aligned to the schools Christian’s values of respect, courage, perseverance, forgiveness, responsibility and compassion.
Children in KS2 will develop these further, allowing them to grow those core skills while developing tactical awareness, sports strategy and the application of a range of principles suited to the concepts of attack and defence. As a result, competition is a key part of Harpole’s PE curriculum, and inter-house competitions are held as an end point in each teaching sequence, both as an assessment opportunity as well as mechanism to further develop teamwork, communication and positive attitudes to a range of outcomes. To further complement our commitment to competitive sport, we drive and encourage attendance across the school at external sporting competitions, both locally and regionally, to give our children a range of experiences to apply skills taught in PE lessons into a variety of alternative contexts.
The culmination of the work that all children put in through their PE lessons is recognised at an annual Sports Day. This celebration of PE changes from year to year with a focus on key sports (such as athletics) or themed around key aspects of British culture and/or significant global sporting events. This also aligns children to their ‘houses’ to further develop a sense of collective achievement, allowing children of all ages to learn from and support each other in a competitive sporting environment. House Captains will drive that sense of togetherness through their house ensuring that the strong tradition of aspiration in sport continues at Harpole Primary School.
Children across KS2 (Year 4, 5 and 6 currently) will also receive 6 one-hour swimming lessons once each year with the aim to increase water confidence, understand the safety aspects associated with water and ultimately develop swimming technique in order to swim a minimum of 25 metres unaided.
Other opportunities to engage in physical activity and sports are offered through before and after school clubs currently managed by Legacy, introducing the children to activities like dodgeball, basketball, football and archery as well as GLK for gymnastics.
A small team of children (The Sports Crew) also arrange structured physical activities on the playground to support positive play and develop key skills in line with specified sports, mentoring and supporting younger children to engage in purposeful active play. In collaboration with the Sports Teaching Assistant and PE Curriculum lead, The Sports Crew and Legacy also plan and deliver training sessions to support up and coming events and competitions so that participants are suitably prepared (in terms of rules and expectations as well as effective technique).
A child-initiated curriculum
Our topic-based curriculum allows pupils to build a body of knowledge and skills which has links and connections to lots of other types of learning about the world around them. Through promoting enquiring minds and a thirst for knowledge in a structured cross-curriculum style, there will inevitably be things that the children wish to learn about that are not pre-planned and scripted. Our curriculum is specifically designed to enable the class teachers to take up pupil-initiated learning and to embrace opportunities for child-initiated lines of investigation and enquiry that can never be planned for.
Our topic-based curriculum is designed to enable children to initiate and drive their own learning. The potential for overlap and revisiting topics should never be seen as a hinderance in responding to the direct opportunities presented by our pupils. By allowing teachers to have the freedom to embrace the pupil voice in their classrooms, learning is a fluid and dynamic process that blends with direct teaching of new content skills and knowledge and actively promotes curiosity and exploration of ideas and facts.
Impact
The effectiveness of Harpole’s PE curriculum is measured in a number of ways
- Formative assessment by teachers and sports teaching assistants within a unit of work.
- Summative assessment via inter-house competitions at the end of a sequence of lessons.
- Whole-school/Key Stage competitive sporting events.
- Subject lead and staff review of schemes of work, lesson objectives and curriculum monitoring.
- Pupil voice.
- Participation, performance and results in local, regional and county-wide competitive events.
The impact of Harpole’s PE curriculum is assessed routinely. Teachers will constantly assess the children’s knowledge and skills through formative assessment within and between lessons. Decisions can then be made within a unit about next steps for each child and any scaffolding/stretching that needs to be considered. The planning process also enables teachers to consider how to adequately support and challenge those children with additional needs.
Progress is closely-monitored using end of unit inter-house competitions to review application of taught skills in terms of technique as well as strategy/communication. The inter-house competition results are monitored and displayed on the house board in the hall to both celebrate success and build cohesion within each house team.
Seasonal whole-school or key-stage events also allow children to demonstrate their learned skills in a competitive environment. Typically, these will be based around the core golden threads of Tag Rugby, Hockey and Cricket, but could also be themed around topical sporting events or other areas guided by the interests of the children.
The PE provision at Harpole Primary School is routinely monitored in a number of ways. Staff meetings allow professional dialogue around the resources available and any additional requirements, and also the effectiveness of current schemes of work, lesson plans and curriculum progression documents. Curriculum release time allows the sports teaching assistant and PE subject lead to consider new resources, alternative ways of doing things and opportunities to observe and implement best practice in the teaching of PE. A child-initiated curriculum allows us to continually monitor what we do and why, with flexibility to adapt given schemes in order to follow children’s interests while still covering the core progression of knowledge and skills as outlined in the curriculum implementation document.
To further underline that point, pupil voice is a critical measure of the success of Harpole’s PE curriculum. Formal dialogue with pupils, both the Sports Crew and beyond, helps us to assess and review our PE curriculum, with additional opportunities to flex and adapt where opportunity arises. Putting the pupils at the heart of our PE curriculum boots engagement in sport and leads to a healthier, happier pupil body.
The final measure for the quality of our sports provision comes in the form of participation. Closely monitoring the number of opportunities we give our children to represent the school at external sporting events allows us to see how engaged we are. Data gathered around pupil participation alongside our results and standings over time gives us a good perspective on what we might need to look at in terms of our curriculum coverage and offering, and where/how we might need to boost engagement in certain areas.