At Ellison Primary Academy, we shape our Physical Education curriculum to allow opportunities for each child to excel and develop their competency in a range of physical activities. Our aim is to provide a broad and balanced curriculum that encourages children to lead healthy, active lives and build character during their educational journey. Daily physical activities, Physical Education and School Sport play a crucial role the identity of our school and we ensure that our children leave Ellison Primary Academy understanding the importance of respect, teamwork, individuality and competition.
Throughout our school we understand the importance of Physical Education and its impact upon a child’s physical, cognitive and social development. We also recognise that Physical Education is a driver for academic learning throughout the curriculum. The children at our school are encouraged to develop their knowledge, skills and attitudes towards Physical Education building a confidence and thirst for learning in a range of physical activities. Furthermore, we strive to embed a culture in which every child reaches their potential and leaves our school with a positive relationship with physical health, activity and personal well-being.
Our curriculum nurtures each child’s confidence by offering a variety of skills and sports, whether this is as an individual, team, co-operative or competitive environment. Every child is given an opportunity to demonstrate a range of personal qualities including; perseverance, problem solving, safety awareness and communication with others. Together with P.E lessons, our vision is to promote a curriculum which provides chances for all pupils to participate in extra-curricular sports, clubs and competitions. Daily activities that enrich the pupil’s health and well-being also play a vital role in what our physical education curriculum has to offer. We aim to create active lessons across the curriculum, enhanced opportunities at break and lunchtimes as well as diverse extra-curricular activities as a part of providing children with learning opportunities.
Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)
Physical activity is vital in children’s all-round development, enabling them to pursue happy, healthy and active lives. Gross and fine motor experiences develop incrementally throughout early childhood, starting with sensory explorations and the development of a child’s strength, co-ordination and positional awareness through tummy time, crawling and play movement with both objects and adults. By creating games and providing opportunities for play both indoors and outdoors, adults can support children to develop their core strength, stability, balance, spatial awareness, co-ordination and agility. Gross motor skills provide the foundation for developing healthy bodies and social and emotional well-being. Fine motor control and precision helps with hand-eye co-ordination, which is later linked to early literacy. Repeated and varied opportunities to explore and play with small world activities, puzzles, arts and crafts and the practice of using small tools, with feedback and support from adults, allow children to develop proficiency, control and confidence.
In Key Stage 1, the children develop fundamental key skills and become increasingly competent and secure in physical literacy. They access a broad range of opportunities to extend these skills which can be categorised into the below strands:
The Key Stage 1 curriculum contains social and development games, gymnastics, dance, ball skills and exercise and fitness. The children are also introduced to the early stages of athletics and outdoor and adventurous activities that they will build upon as they transition into Key Stage 2.
In Key Stage 2, the children continue to apply and develop a broader range of skills and learn how and when to apply them in different situations. In lower KS2, children learn skills and tactics for a variety of games and begin to evaluate the success of them. New vocabulary is explained to support their learning and to allow the children to understand the key concepts of each lesson. Following on into upper KS2, we aim to develop the children’s confidence to become more competent and gain expertise in their techniques. They will understand what makes effective performance and how they can apply this to their own and others’ work. The children apply taught strategies and make connections with more complex games, dance activities and gymnastics. Children are encouraged to learn how to evaluate and comment on skills, techniques and ideas through observation and how this can help to improve their work and performances.
Furthermore, throughout the whole of KS2, all children are able to experience outdoor and adventurous activities such as orienteering, team building and problem solving challenges. Planning for Key Stage 2 involves teachers creating engaging learning using high quality resources that are available within school. Whilst planning, there is an initial assessment of the skills of the group and gaps in learning can be assessed. Teachers use precise questioning in lessons to assess knowledge and skills, and identify any children with gaps in their learning, ensuring that they can all make progress.
Teaching Physical Education to children with Special Educational Needs (SEN)
All children have the opportunity to take part in Physical Education at Ellison Primary Academy. Through our P.E curriculum we ensure that lessons are accessible for children with special educational needs and through planning, different ways of minimising or reducing barriers are identified. In this case, activities will be modified and adapted to offer an equivalent level of challenge to the individual to ensure that they make progress in line with their Individual Education Plans (IEPS). We also provide suitable opportunities for those children who are Gifted and Talented; ensuring that they are given the correct challenge to suit their needs and we provide links to local sports clubs.
Within all year groups at Ellison Primary Academy, we ensure that the children are educated on the health benefits and the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle throughout all stages of life. Each half term, a year group will participate in activities aimed at promoting this with specialists from Time4Sport. Activities include analysing the sugars in certain foods and looking at our daily intake of proteins, fats and carbohydrates.
Extra-curricular opportunities
Children at Ellison Primary Academy enjoy the opportunity to join a number of extra- curricular activities with the main focus being during lunch times and after school. The clubs provide further scope for our children to work on their skills in a specific sport and develop socially with other members of the school. Our Sporting Champions (consisting of Year 2 pupils representing each year group) help to lead lunch time sessions such as golf, cricket and throwing activities. Afterschool clubs range from traditional sports including football and netball to golf, dance and KS1 multi-sports. In our extra-curricular clubs we promote and encourage the children to compete at many School Games events organised by the local School Games Organisers. We have competed in many events and tailor which competitions we enter by the interests of the children. From the events, we have achieved the Gold Level School Games mark for a number of consecutive years and had a significant rise in participation levels year-on-year.
At Ellison Primary Academy, we enable our pupils to access local sporting clubs in the community where they can build upon their skillset and work socially within a team. Local sporting clubs in the community include; Onneley Golf Club, Newcastle Netball Club, Porthill Cricket Club and Crown Green Bowls.
Active learning opportunities
In addition to P.E sessions, we aim to make sure that each child can access 30 minutes of physical activity every day. Our school-wide Daily Mile initiative aims to promote competition between each class and enables every child to contribute to their own health. Lessons are tailored to allow the children to have short brain-breaks such as ‘Supermovers’, ‘Cosmic Yoga’ and daily stimulating workouts. We also provide the children with a number of activities at break and lunchtimes such as using the exercise equipment, outdoor activities and a golf putting green. Each lunch time different activities are marked out in our zoned areas, where our Sporting Champions and Lunchtime Supervisors will help to demonstrate each skill and the ethics of team work and fair play.
Impact:
The impact and indicator of our strong P.E curriculum is to ensure that all children are equipped and able to have accessed an exciting, skills-based curriculum, ready for their progression into Key Stage 3. Our children will develop positive attitudes to participation in physical activities, lead healthy lives and become role models for the future. Children will gradually develop a knowledge and enthusiasm for physical activity and understanding what it takes to succeed. They will have acquired and developed different skills through independent and group activities with increasing physical awareness. Children will be able to take learning experiences and apply them in different competitive situations showing core-social values including fairness, respect and teamwork. Pupils will also be encouraged to evaluate and share reasons on how to improve their own or others performances. The use of our school-wide assessment will enable a class teacher to build upon the previous year’s learning, and understand specific areas for each child to develop in and support will be given to the pupil to reach their goals. By having high expectations embedded throughout Ellison Primary Academy, children will leave our school having had access to excellent opportunities and become engaged, motivated learners.