Rationale
Our physical education curriculum provides opportunities for pupils to become physically confident in a way which supports their health and fitness. Our key aim is to inspire our pupils to competitive sporting excellence, through the curriculum, extra-curricular PE activities, trained coaches, sports competitions as well as motivational visits from sporting stars!
Our children start school with generally good foundations: their co-ordination, ball skills and spatial awareness and judgement have developed well. However, for an increasing number, high levels of screen time mean they have low activity levels. Our PE curriculum is therefore designed to develop fundamental movement skills of balance, locomotor and ball skills. There is a deliberate repetition of key locomotor and ball skills units from Nursery through to Years 1 and 2, to enable the children to practise and further hone the fundamental skills they will need to participate in the games units offered in Key Stage 2.
Our PE curriculum cover
We provide opportunities for all pupils, including those with SEND, to compete against other schools in all of these sports as part of our membership of the Sports Partnership.
We believe that physical activity matters, that negotiating our way in the world is as much a physical as an intellectual journey and we follow the national curriculum and ensure our units of learning build on previous skills and knowledge. Opportunities to compete in sports build character and help to embed values such as fairness and respect. It is our intent to deliver high quality teaching and learning opportunities that inspire all children to succeed in physical activities, to the highest possible level of achievement.
Our Curriculum
It is our intention that pupils become a little more expert as they progress through the curriculum, accumulating and connecting substantive and disciplinary knowledge. Our curriculum has been underpinned by the following knowledge:
Procedural Knowledge - this is the skills based knowledge – the knowing how.
Declarative knowledge – this is the subject knowledge – the knowing what.
At Jericho, we have identified three strands that run throughout the curriculum:
- motor competence,
- rules, strategies and tactics; and
- healthy participation.
We have designed our curriculum so that children:
Build upon prior learning: For example, at KS2, children develop their knowledge of invasion games that build across the key stage. Each unit, building on the previous content carefully interwoven with knowledge to build their understanding of rules, strategies and tactics.
Cumulate Knowledge: P.E is planned so that the retention of knowledge is much more than just ‘in the moment knowledge’. The cumulative nature of the curriculum is made memorable by revisiting concepts over time to ensure that they culminate in out end of unit, year and key stage outcomes.
Build on their Substantive Knowledge: Our curriculum equips pupils to become ‘more expert’ in both their understanding of procedural and declarative knowledge with each study . They grow an ever-broadening model of the subject. We have identified clear knowledge that is to be taught for each unit of work. This knowledge is carefully sequenced so that each piece of knowledge builds on the previous piece of knowledge so that children become ‘more expert’ in the subject. Golden nuggets of knowledge have been identified clearly in each lesson so that teachers can easily check whether children know more and remember more.
Develop their P.E Vocabulary: P.E vocabulary is planned sequentially and cumulatively from Early Years to Y6. High-frequency, multiple-meaning words (tier 2) are taught and help make sense of subject-specific words (tier 3).
Knowledge Retention: The cumulative nature of the curriculum is made memorable by the use low stakes quizzes that help children to remember the golden nuggets.
Every class has at least two hours of Physical education a week. Each class participates in high quality indoor or outdoor PE every week; indoor units include gymnastics, dance and ball skills; outdoor units are skills and games-based. The indoor PE curriculum revisits activities and skills to reinforce previous learning and ensure children further develop these skills over their school journey.
We adapted our swimming curriculum following Covid so that Year 3 - 6 pupils attended swimming lessons as a 2-week intense course to consolidate prior learning that was disrupted by Covid pool closures. This was covered by the Sports Premium Grant are some of our coaches, equipment and sporting competitions.
Year 3 and 4 pupils enjoy a residential programme which involves a range of ambitious activities including orienteering, canoeing, sailing and climbing. Healthy diet and lifestyle are explicitly taught as part of our science curriculum in Years 2, 4 and 6, and as part of our PSHE curriculum.