Physical Education

Our School Vision

To create a school that enables all pupils (no matter what background or starting point) to achieve their full potential and promotes the school as a beacon within the community, where aspirations are achieved and dreams are a reality for all pupils, staff and families.

Our Physical Education Vision

To provide all children the opportunity to develop their fundamental movement skills and participate in physical activity. To gain an understanding of the importance of staying active and living a healthy lifestyle.

What does it mean to be physically active and demonstrate good sportsmanship?

A person who uses energy by participating in physical activity, whether it is recreational or competitive. Someone who demonstrates the following sports values:

Our Physical Education curriculum

At St. Helen's Primary School, in our Early Years, we offer daily opportunities to develop the children's gross and fine motor skills. We use a variety of activities indoors and outdoors.

At St Helen’s Primary School, we have tailored our Physical Education Curriculum around the aims of the National Curriculum.

Pupils progressively develop their fundamental movement skills from Early Years up to Year 6, which enables them to develop their aptitude in a range of sports. The curriculum includes progression in these movements to more complex movements as they get older and these skills can be applied in various skills and activities.

We also encourage games values of passion, self-belief, respect, honesty, determination and teamwork along with developing personal challenges.

Children are given the opportunity to swim during KS2.

Classes of knowledge in the physical education curriculum:

Declarative – Declarative knowledge is the 'know-what'. Declarative knowledge in PE is the factual knowledge concerning movement, rules, tactics, strategies, health and participation.

Procedural – Procedural knowledge can be viewed as the know-how to apply declarative facts. This might include applying the tactics to a practice situation or modified game. This knowledge in a PE setting is best put into practice through physical demonstration or physical participation.

The Three Pillars of Physical Education:

The Motor competence pillar: This is the person’s ability to make a range of physical actions which include co-ordinating fine and gross motor skills. These are fundamental to participating in everyday activities.

The Rules, strategies and tactics pillar: Pupils need to be taught how to move intelligently as well as competently. Pupils need to be taught the rules, strategies and tactics involved with different types of activities Tactics are decisions people make about how, when and where to move,

The Healthy participation pillar: It is important for pupils to make connections between health and how it applies to physical activity. Making informed decisions in a physical activity in a healthy way.

Extra-curricular: We offer a range of physical activities during break times and pupils can take part in a range of tournaments and sports festivals both within school (Intra-competitions) between year groups and with other schools (Inter-competitions). We also offer after school multi-skills clubs.

SEND Statement

St. Helen's promotes a curriculum that puts all pupils, regardless of their needs, at the heart of what we do. By building mutual respect, we accept others for their differences believing that everyone is special and everyone has something to offer. Our inclusive and enriching curriculum, written for all children, provides pupils with meaningful and aspirational experiences as well as promoting personal growth for life-long learning. When the curriculum needs adapting to suit the needs of individual children, appropriate modifications are made by the class teacher with support from the SENDCo and the Curriculum Subject Lead.

Culture Capital

We provide weekly engaging Physical Education lessons for all children whilst teaching the National Curriculum topics to develop their basic fundamental skills. We encourage children to develop their vocabulary within Physical Education and to demonstrate the sports values where possible. We take advantage of any opportunities to have visitors linked to participating in physical activity and sports from our local community or wider community. We also take advantage of in school and outer school competitions and within the school trust.

Sports competition 2022-23 Sports competitions 2023-24

Sports Coach

We are very lucky in school to have a sports coach, Mr Gibson. We used some of our Sports Premium fund in order to extend our PE provision. Mr Gibson works closely with the teachers to support in lessons and takes our children to sporting events and festivals. He also helps run after school clubs so that we can have a wider range of after school sports in school.

SSOC (School Sports Organising Crew)

Each year we appoint an SSOC crew for our school. These children support others within school during lunchtimes to play organised games and activities to support with childrens’ teamwork, physical activity (keeping active for 60min a day) and enjoyment of physical activity. The SSOC actively engage pupils within physical opportunities through their leadership roles.

After School Clubs

We offer school sports clubs that are available to all our pupils including a multi-skills club.

Sportsmark Award and celebrating good sports values

We are delighted to announce that we have achieved the School Games Gold Mark Award for the 2023/24 academic year.

The School Games Mark is a Government-led award scheme launched in 2012, facilitated by the Youth Sport Trust to reward schools for their commitment to the development of competition across their school and into the community, and we are delighted to have been recognised for our success. With our young people competing in local inter-school competitions this year, we are extremely proud of our pupils for their dedication to all aspects of school sport, including those young volunteers, leaders and officials who made our competitions possible. As part of our application, we were asked to fulfil criteria in the areas of participation, competition, workforce and clubs, and we are pleased that the hard work of everyone at our school has been rewarded.

Every week, we celebrate the children who have demonstrated key sports values. The children are selected for demonstrating one or more of the values during physical activity sessions or in other areas of learning and daily life.

Visitors

We welcome a variety of local clubs and sports contacts into school to provide the children with further opportunities and sessions. These include judo instructors, skipping instructors, tennis coach, cycling instructors and dance instructors.

We were also delighted and honoured to welcome paralympian, Stephen Miller MBE into school to carry out active workshops with all year groups and give an inspiring presentation to the children. The British athlete, competes in the fields of Paralympic club and discus throwing. He has won three gold, one silver, and one bronze medal in the F32/51 club throw at the Paralympics and in Paralympic F32/51 discus, he has won one bronze medal. The children were inspired by his determination, passion and self belief to overcome challenges in order to become a top athlete.

We had a fantastic end to the school sports week with a visit from GB Alpine Skier Isla Ward. Isla told the children all about her amazing career and her biggest achievement winning the National Junior Race held in Bielmonte. Throughout the afternoon each class took part in a fitness circuit.

We would like to thank Isla for finding the time to come into school and deliver, what was a truly motivational assembly to the children.