Physical Education Curriculum Rationale 

At Hadrian Primary School we are athletes! We want our children to love physical education and sport. We want them to have no limits to what their ambitions are and grow up wanting to be personal trainers, nutritionists, sports journalist or gold medal winners. We want them to embody our core values; “Be Unique; Believe, Achieve, Succeed Together”. The PE curriculum has been carefully crafted so that our children develop their sporting capital. We want our children to remember their PE lessons in our school, to cherish these memories and embrace the opportunities they are presented with.

Intent

At Hadrian, all pupils have the right to experience a variety of opportunities to participate in physical activity and sport across the whole curriculum. We recognise the importance of sport in every aspect of daily life. The new government initiatives relating to children completing 60 minutes of activity each day are carefully planned into our curriculum, allowing children to increase their levels of physical activity at school and through after school sports provision.

To further demonstrate our commitment to providing broader experiences of a range of sports and activities we offer daily extra-curricular activities at both lunchtimes and after school. Our activities include, multi skills, dancing and dodgeball. The clubs are oversubscribed and the children are fascinated by the range of disciplines we are providing them with. 

When children leave Hadrian at the end of Year 6, our aim is to make sure they have been given the opportunities to develop and improve basic PE skills in a range of different sports. Not only can it teach children about developing important skills and keeping themselves healthy, but also about problem solving, self-assessment (identifying their strengths), communication, team work and competitiveness which can be carried across all the different subjects in the curriculum.

Building vital skills, whether in football, gymnastics or dance are extremely important and every child will constantly and consistently develop their own personal PE skills from Nursery up to Year 6.

We want our children to use the history, cultural diversity and vibrancy of our local area and landmarked town - South Shields. Our children are given the opportunities to learn from other cultures, respect diversity, co-operate with one another and appreciate what they have. We achieve this by providing a strong SMSC curriculum, with British Values and our core values placed at the heart of everything we do. This often feeds into the PE curriculum. For example, earlier this year our Year 5 children were moved by the after effects of the World Cup and the vandalism of the Marcus Rashford Mural. They contribute to messages of hope and kindness whilst learning the values of inclusivity through positive play. The children listened to emotive recounts from professional footballers about their experiences of racism. They discussed issues in modern society and the staff commented how mature and thoughtful their contributions were. Their work was posted to Liverpool and a blogger on Twitter kindly took the messages to the mural and placed them to show our full support. 

We enrich their time in our school with memorable, unforgettable experiences and provide opportunities which are normally out of reach – this piques their interests and passions. 

For example, as part of our partnership with SSFC, our children get to see some of their idols up close both in school and on the pitch. In fact, some lucky children represented the school at the South Shields vs Basford home game on Saturday 9th October 2021 as flag bearers- a memory they will never forget!  We firmly believe that it is not just about what happens in the classroom, it is about the added value we offer to really inspire our children. 

Implementation

At Hadrian, we believe that children should be given as many opportunities as possible to enhance their basic skills in PE and become healthier and more physically active. Through staff training and CPD, staff are able to access specialist sports development time to observe specialist coaching in PE lessons, which improves knowledge and understanding how to teach key basic skills in a variety of different subjects as well as overall staff confidence. The PE co-ordinator also completes training and then shares ideas and resources with other staff members through links with the Youth Sports Trust (YST) and the partnership with South Tyneside sport.

Our PE curriculum has been carefully built and the learning opportunities and assessment milestones for each year group crafted to ensure progression and repetition in terms of embedding key learning, knowledge and skills. For example, we focus our teaching on six main strands of physical education; dance, invasion games, gymnastics, striking and fielding games, athletics and net and wall games. These are revisited year on year where pupils progressively build their skills and knowledge. In addition to this we provide specialist swimming teaching to pupils in Years 3, 4, 5 and 6. 

At Hadrian, we follow a skills progression framework, where children develop and improve basic skills in PE lessons from Nursery to Year 6. This ensures children have the relevant skills necessary when they leave Hadrian and move onto secondary education. The progression framework is used in relation with a scheme of work, in which children build on the previous years’ skills. This allows children to become not only more familiar with basic skills in a range of different sports, but they become more advanced and are able to challenge themselves when attempting different types of sports and physical activities. For example, Active Future provide high quality sports development sessions every Monday to four different classes/year groups. Not only does this support the improvement and development of children’s key skills in a range of sports, it provides staff with an excellent CPD opportunity, which supports their confidence and delivery of future PE lessons.

The continuation of links with local sports clubs and organisations, allows us at Hadrian to cater for a range of different sports, for a range of different ages, abilities and backgrounds. We understand that PE lends itself to many other subjects across the curriculum and can help pupil progress through maths and English with our ‘Active in 5’ daily physical activity, active starters and lessons based around incorporating small bursts of physical activity. We are constantly providing many opportunities for children to access sport, through School sports games competitions, lunchtime and after school club, as well as community links with South Shields FC Foundation, Harton and Westoe rugby club, swimming at Haven point, Foundation of Light, Boldon LTC, Sportsworks, Thurston and the Newcastle Eagles. Our links with South Shields FC foundation have allowed the children to participate in PE based sessions with a cross-curricular focus on maths, phonics, fine motor skills and basic movements and PSHE and these are sessions delivered by professional coaches across all year groups. For example, Reception and Year 1 children have been taking part in ‘Monkey Movements,' 'Polly Phonics' and 'Matey Maths' sessions delivered by expert coaches from South Shields FC Foundation. This allows the children to develop key movement and fine motor skills. The children thoroughly enjoy these sessions and this prepares the children for the fundamental skills they need to use in everyday life.

Another example of how we allow children to benefit from community links through sport, is through our lunch and after school clubs that we provide with the support of SSFC and the dedicated coaches they provide to allow our children to experience a range of different sports and activities. SSFC even visited our school and delivered an assembly on Friday 11th February 2022 to promote all clubs that they are providing the children at Hadrian.

To achieve our main objectives at Hadrian we will:

• Take advantage of cross-curricular links to develop and improve levels of pupil progress in a range of different curriculum subjects,

• Develop pupil’s basic PE skills, knowledge and understanding, confidence and active levels by continuing to provide curriculum, lunchtime and after school sports provision.

• Encourage children to participate in after school sports clubs, join local sporting clubs and organisations and encourage children to do at least 60 minutes activity daily.

• Continue to provide curriculum, lunchtime and after school sports provision, with an emphasis on making a variety of different clubs and sports available for all pupils in all year groups.

• Maintain links with local sports clubs and organisation as well as the continuation to provide opportunities for children to compete against other schools in the area through the South Tyneside school games partnership.

• Use the schemes of work and resources available to further enhance staff understanding and confidence when teaching PE, as well as, allowing children to fully benefit from skills taught in PE lessons.

• Ensure resources are relevant and up to date and any new information or resource are continually shared among other staff members to support pupil learning.

• Exceptional levels of originality, imagination and creativity in their techniques, tactics and choreography, knowledge of how to improve their own and others’ performance and the ability to work independently for extended periods of time without the need of guidance or support.

• A keen interest in PE. A willingness to participate eagerly in every lesson, highly positive attitudes and the ability to make informed choices about engaging fully in extra-curricular sport.

• The ability to swim at least 25 metres before the end of Year 6 and knowledge of how to remain safe in and around water.

Impact

Our PE curriculum is very high quality, well thought out and is carefully planned to demonstrate progression through a range of sports. The percentage of children taking part in curriculum based sports provision as well as lunchtime and after school sports clubs has increased by 50%. This increase has allowed children the opportunity to experience a variety of different sports, increase enjoyment in PE and sport lessons and develop the necessary skills to take them to the next stage in their own personal development. We use both formative and summative assessment information in every PE lesson. Staff use this information to inform their short-term planning and short-term interventions. This helps us provide the best possible support for all of our pupils, including the more able. The assessment milestones for each phase have been carefully mapped out and further broken down for each year group. This means that skills in PE are progressive and build year on year. For example, staff took part in some excellent PE CPD on May 21st 2021. This was provided by Nathan Kew in from the South Shields Foundation on different ways to teach PE and how important PE is across the whole of the curriculum. He also asked us to be an integral part of a new PE curriculum which the foundation was developing and asked Hadrian to be one of the trial schools to deliver this new PE curriculum to our staff and children. Of course we were delighted to accept and look forward to being part of a new exciting idea!

Our staff use Seesaw to record progression in the form of photos and videos. This helps to inform future planning and make provisions for suitable interventions. Assessment information is collected frequently and analysed as part of our monitoring cycle. This process provides an accurate and comprehensive understanding of the quality of education in PE. Monitoring in PE includes: lesson observations and/or learning walks, pupil/parent and/or staff voice.

At Hadrian Primary School we are Athletes and Sports Personalities!