Physical Education

PE Learning Pathway at St John's

At St. John’s Primary School, we offer a broad and balanced PE curriculum that enables and inspires our pupils to lead active and healthy lifestyles. Our curriculum is designed to be enjoyable, challenging and accessible to all whilst developing our pupils’ knowledge, skills and understanding of physical activity, of themselves and keeping healthy. As a result, our pupils can perform with increasing competence and confidence in a range of physically demanding activities. 

To support teaching and learning in PE we follow the 'Get Set' scheme. This scheme has a wealth of resources and sets out clear progression of knowledge and skills as reflected in our Learning Pathway. We believe that this approach develops leaner's individual skills and children's ability to demonstrate the values which are integral to sport and playing in teams.

It is our vision and aim for every pupil to want to succeed and achieve their full potential in sport as well as to lead physically active lifestyles. We strive to inspire our pupils to be physically active every day and to want to develop their level of skill and confidence in a range of sports and increase the likelihood of them continuing to play sport(s) regularly when they leave school. Therefore, we provide opportunities for daily physical activity during lessons, at break times and offer a range of extra-curricular clubs before and after school. At St. John’s we believe that PE should be inclusive no matter the age, ability or background of any child and as such we offer a wide range of traditional and non-traditional sports, both as part of our curriculum and school clubs.

In order to develop positive attitudes towards self-esteem, co-operative learning, fairness, leadership and respect for others’ abilities, we believe that our pupils should have the opportunity to compete in sport at different levels. This may be through intra-competitions (in schools), inter-competitions (between other schools) or county-level competitions. Opportunities, like these, to work collaboratively and as a team are underpinned by our school belief that ‘there is one body, but it has many parts’. We believe that, by working together, as a team, as a body, the pupils will communicate and support each other in reaching an end goal. To underpin this further, we offer as many fixtures as possible to motivate attendees, we host events that spectators can watch and we raise the profile of various sports by celebrating the matches in newsletters and on the school website.

Every year group receives 1 indoor and 1 outdoor PE lesson a week in which basic skills are taught and practised before being applied in game situations. We offer a progressive curriculum in which children are given time to explore and practise these skills, revisiting them again in each year group.

In Years 3-5, we offer swimming at the local Sports Centre and aim for most children to be able to swim 25m by the end of their sessions in Year 5.

To further enhance the teaching and learning of our PE curriculum, we employ PE specialists (First Class Sports) to work with the children and staff for 1.5 days each week. This provides specialist teaching for pupils and supports the professional development of teachers.

Participation

Every child is expected to participate in all PE sessions. If a child cannot take part due to sickness or injury, then the class teacher must receive a letter or email from the child’s parents/guardians.

If a child has forgotten their kit, then spare clothes will be found wherever possible. If a child continues to forget their PE kit, then a letter is sent home to notify parents/guardians of this. We have a ‘whatever the weather’ policy and endeavour to take the children out for physical activity no matter what the weather.

Uniform

To maximise the time available for learning, children wear their PE kit throughout the days on which they have PE lessons. The St John's PE kit consists of: a red polo shirt with the school logo; navy blue tracksuit bottoms and tracksuit jumper; a waterproof jacket; navy blue shorts/skort; and black or white trainers. Please ensure all kit is named; we can then re-unite items with their owners.