Physical Education
PE At St Austin's
At St. Austin's Catholic Primary School, we want every child to love learning in PE. We promote active lifestyles throughout our everyday lives, through play and teamwork and want children to discover the link between a healthy body and a healthy mind.
Intent- What are we trying to achieve?
Our philosophy of PE is to develop the whole child with essential learning skills; ensure all pupils reach their full potential in PE and sport and develop a lifelong participation in activity for a healthy lifestyle.
The curriculum is designed to build a tangible development between fundamental and specialised movement skills where the fundamental skills are applied in a variety of opportunities.
It is our intent to develop behaviours as well as fundamental movement skills: a broad and holistic approach that improves personal, social, cognitive and creative behaviours as well as teaching health & fitness and applying physical activity.
There is a specific focus on motor competence, breaking down skills to ensure basic skills of ABC (Agility, Balance, Control) are understood before adding it to a sport setting to understand rules, strategies and tactics.
Through engagement in PE, we strive to develop in children a lifelong love of physical activity, whether it is competitive sport or an enjoyment in keeping active and healthy. Children will experience a wide variety of sports and outdoor activities to develop their physical confidence, their skill in using their body and their understanding of the sporting values.
Implementation- how do we translate our vision into practice?
Each week children access a minimum of two hours of high quality structured physical activity. Children develop age-appropriate PE skills through a series of stimulating lessons which are planned, with clear knowledge and skills-based learning objectives and subject-specific vocabulary. Our curriculum is delivered through highly effective ‘quality first teaching’ using the PAINSLEY model.
1 hour of PE provision is taught using the Real PE scheme and another hour is sports based.
Children have the opportunity to develop competence in a broad range of physical skills (see curriculum map). There is a focus on a greater development of fundamental movement skills at an early age if they are to progress with success at a variety of sports later on. These include locomotor skills, object control skills and stability skills. Therefore every PE lesson incorporates developing aspects of these fundamentals.
In the EYFS and KS1 pupils develop ‘automacity’ i.e. being able to complete practical components that are isolated and practised. As they progress into KS2, pupils go through the process of ‘internalisation’ whereby they re-encounter direct knowledge and start to make connections independently and build in complexity and opportunities such as tactical awareness and expending or conserving energy. This means that some of the scaffolding is removed. By the end of KS2, pupils have enough direct knowledge to draw on their schema and to participate skilfully.
Pupils are able to self and peer-review and practise in order to progress at their own pace in developing skills using personalised goals set out through clear pathways.
Impact- what is the impact of our curriculum on our students?
The PE curriculum educates pupils with the correct physical techniques for reasons of improving safety and physical understanding. The children are able to reflect on their own performance and development. Pupils can apply their skillsets and their knowledge of what they have learnt at school in a life-long love and commitment to sport and exercise in order to maintain a physically and mentally healthy lifestyle. Their confidence, social skills and resilience through participating in physical activity enables pupils to develop their whole self.