Physical Education

‘Physical Fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body. It is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity’.

John F Kennedy

Intent

At Leyland Methodist Schools we have developed a Physical Education curriculum that is tailored to the needs of all our learners. We strive to give our children the opportunity to experience a rich, broad and balanced approach to Physical Education through the school curriculum, competitions, festivals, daily physical activity opportunities, wide range of enrichment activities and an exciting and varied choice of extra-curricular clubs. Our intention is for all our learners to experience a high quality Physical Education programme appropriate to their needs focussing on learning through physical activity and sport. This will enable them to be physically literate and lead them to develop a lifelong healthy and active lifestyle. The opportunities we provide to compete in sport and a wide range of other activities build character and helps to embed values such as fairness, respect, resilience, determination, responsibility, positivity and challenge. We are passionate about the need to teach our children how to cooperate and collaborate with others as part of a team, understanding fairness and equality and to embed these lifelong values. Our PE curriculum aims to improve the wellbeing and fitness of all our children not only through the sporting skills taught, but also through the underpinning values and disciplines that PE promotes. Our enthusiastic staff team work hard to provide a curriculum that is exciting, motivational and inclusive for all our pupils and that will maximise the development of every child’s ability and achievement in Physical Education. We want to nurture the talents of our young people so that one day we might contribute to producing the next talented Premiership footballer, Superleague netball player or Olympic athlete!

We are proud to have been awarded the gold mark for the Sainsbury’s Games Mark through our high levels of inclusion, competition and the leadership opportunities given to our children and strive to maintain this.

P.E. and the National Curriculum

The National Curriculum Programme of Study for Physical Education provides the foundation of our P.E. curriculum at Leyland Methodist Schools and underpins all the work that we do. Using this as a baseline, we have undertaken a thorough Curriculum Needs Analysis, studying the characteristics of our learners here in Leyland to ensure that we understand and provide a curriculum that fulfils their needs and requirements. We have a detailed progressive scheme of work that is enhanced by a wide range of coaching opportunities, extra-curricular clubs, competitions, trips, residential trips and enrichment activities. Our curriculum is sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before. There are many opportunities for cross-curricular work in PE such as PSHE, Science and DT when learning about healthy eating and living a healthy lifestyle. When learning about famous sporting events and the Olympics children develop their Geography and History knowledge.

We have developed a detailed Progression Document that maps out the key skills in learning throughout all aspects of P.E. and shows what these skills look like at each level from Year 1 through to Year 6. This progression document provides clarity for both teachers and learners alike – it signals clearly what the expected level of progress looks like at each Key Stage and enables accurate assessments of children to be made.

Diversity

Our PE curriculum offers diversity in the range of sports, dance and music that we use in our curriculum lessons and extra-curricular activities. Children learn about famous athletes and sportspeople from around the world during Healthy Living week and in Worship through our Christian values of perseverance, resilience, courage and hope. Music from a wide range of countries is used in warm-ups and dance activities and children are introduced to different dance styles from cultures such as Indian, African and Chinese. These dance sessions are delivered by staff, specialist coaches and visitors into school. Our visit from ‘Prags’ during multicultural week introduced the children to her Indian culture through dance, music and food.  All our children work with a range of strong and talented male and female role models who work in or visit our school and introduce them to a wide variety of sports that traditionally may be seen as male or female dominated.

Cultural Capital

P.E. provides a great opportunity to enrich the experiences and opportunities available to all of our children. Our curriculum and extensive enrichment programme are specifically designed to fill any gaps in our children’s experience and to develop their cultural capital. We offer an extensive range of extra-curricular activities delivered by our talented staff, School Sports Partnership coaches and other external coaches. They offer exciting experiences in sports such as judo, fencing, cheerleading, tag rugby, netball, gymnastics, basketball, multi-skills, tennis, yoga, orienteering, hockey and football. Links are made with sporting clubs to encourage children to further develop their interest, ability, talent and skills in clubs out of school.

In addition to this we are able to provide enrichment activities such as Tots on Tyres, Bikeability, Scootsafe, Heart Start (first aid training), Nutrition Mission (healthy eating) and Dance from the Heart where the whole school come together to perform a dance taught by our Year 5 children. All our Year 4 children are taught the vital skills of Swimming and Water Safety and have the opportunity to go swimming every week and compete in a Gala in the Summer Term. Lessons take place at Leyland Leisure Centre, where qualified swimming coaches teach essential skills and personal survival techniques.

Our children are also able to represent school participating in many festivals, competitions and tournaments (irrespective of their ability) and have had the opportunity to compete annually in the Lancashire School Games.

We are further able to enrich the experiences of our children through trips, which offer valuable outdoor and adventurous experiences such as Brockholes Nature Reserve, Bring Yer Wellies, Cuerden Valley and Worden Park to name a few. Our annual Year 6 residential trip to Tower Wood in the Lake District provides our children with an invaluable opportunity to immerse themselves in new outdoor and adventurous activities, to work collaboratively, build their self-confidence, independence and develop new friendships. They experience the sense of achievement when they challenge themselves and push their limits.

Throughout school, there are many opportunities to develop our children’s leadership skills through the roles of playground leaders in EYFS and Key Stage 1 and Anti-Bullying Ambassadors in Key Stage 2.  They help to enrich lunchtimes through running our Change 4 Life clubs alongside staff members and encouraging other children to become more active and healthy. Our Year 5 children assist in teaching our ‘Dance from the Heart’ routine to other year groups culminating in a thrilling whole school performance.

We actively encourage parents to celebrate the sporting achievements of our children and regularly invite them to watch their children perform in annual Sports Days, school competitions, tournaments, galas and dance performances such as after school cheerleading and ‘Dance from the Heart’ finale.

Equality of Opportunity

Our P.E. curriculum has been carefully designed and planned to provide rich, varied and exciting experiences for all our children. In order for all our learners to have full access to this we use money from the Sports Premium funding and Pupil Premium Strategy to ensure that there are no barriers to those that need it. We aim to provide all our pupils with the opportunity to succeed and to reach the highest level of personal achievement and ensure that all our vulnerable children have full access to every club, enrichment activity, visit and residential trip. We have carefully allocated our funding to ensure that we provide an enhanced and enriched curriculum for all.