Physical Education and Swimming
- Swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres.
- Use a range of strokes effectively for example, front crawl, back stroke and breast stroke.
- Perform safe self-rescue in different water based situations.
Intent
Ursula Taylor C of E School recognises and values the importance of Physical Education (P.E) and Sports.
PE and Sport at UTS aims to provide our children with a high-quality physical education curriculum that inspires all pupils to succeed and excel in competitive sports and other physically-demanding activities.
We do this through fully adhering to the aims of the National Curriculum for Physical Education to ensure that all children:
• develop competence to excel in a broad range of physical activities
• are physically active for sustained periods of time
• engage in competitive sports and activities
• lead healthy, active lives
It is our intention to offer a curriculum that enables children to develop knowledge, skills and vocabulary in a broad range of sporting activities, as well as developing values and transferrable life skills such as tolerance, fairness and respect.
Through enrichment activities and internal and external-school competitions, often working with local schools through our School Sports Partnership, we aim to raise the profile of PE and expose our children to sports they may never have had the opportunity to engage with.
Our PE Curriculum is based on the National Curriculum with a clear progression structure from Reception to Year 6. This progression of skills has been planned in order to build on the skills needed to meet the end of Key Stage objectives in the National Curriculum. Additionally, an imperative element of the curriculum at UTS shows a need for healthy life styles, a balanced diet, positive growth mind-set and the resilience to persevere. We link our PHSE curriculum with PE with respect to being healthy, active and having good mental health.
We are passionate about the need to teach children how to co-operate and collaborate with others, as part of a team, understanding fairness and equity of play to embed life-long values.
Implementation
The PE curriculum is taught through the use of the Cambridge Scheme for PE, which provides structured, progressive lessons that link with the National Curriculum. The Scheme is used by all staff and supports staff subject knowledge and pedagogical development where required. Teachers are able to adjust and change lessons to suit the needs of their classes but the scheme provides a strong basis of what is expected in each year group. Each class has access to two hours of high quality physical activity every week, made up of an indoor session and an outdoor session. In the summer this includes Swimming in our school pool. These are taught by the class teachers who have received training and support. Sometime we have external coaches in school to teach specialist sessions of PE, which our Teachers and staff are involved with to support their professional development. These sessions are part of our SSCO Partnership and funded through the Sports Premium. Through the use of coaches, fun and innovative sessions are run that offer staff the chance to upskill their own practice. Each lesson, children are given the opportunity to practise skills in a variety of ways and each lesson builds upon the previous skills, allowing them time to embed it. Different skills are recapped throughout, and across, the years, each time they are being built upon; allowing children to know more and remember more.
All children at UTS receive swimming lessons every summer term, using our on-site Pool. Children have at least two sessions a week, which are aimed at developing water confidence, stroke skill and water safety. Further details of our swimming provision can be found on this website under ‘Swimming’. We aim for many of our Year 6 children to leave us being able to swim 25m or more.
We offer a wide range of sporting after-school clubs run by both teaching staff and outside agencies: SSG, whom are employed through the Sports Premium to provide all children in Year 1 – 6 with additional sporting opportunities. All children have the opportunity to attend these clubs.
Our SSG clubs change activities every half term to cater to a range of abilities and preferences. Clubs run every Monday and Tuesday after school. A range of festivals and competitions take place throughout the school year, giving children opportunities to take part in competitive sports.
Impact
Our curriculum aims to improve the wellbeing and fitness of all children at Ursula Taylor; not only through the sporting skills taught, but through the underpinning values and disciplines that PE promotes.
Through strong links with PHSE we promote the overall well-being and health of each child through teaching about self-discipline and that to be successful you need to take ownership and responsibility of their own health and fitness.
In all classes, children possess a wide range of physical abilities. Whilst recognising this fact, we provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. Children at Ursula Taylor enjoy and make good progress in PE and are eager to attend after school clubs and competitive sports events.