PE
Why PE matters:
St John’s has had a long tradition of promoting the enjoyment of sport and PE, with wide-ranging opportunities for all pupils to participate in sports and physical activities at school and outside of school hours. Through PE we promote a willingness for all to take part in sports and work hard towards promoting good sportsmanship and teamwork. We strongly believe that this positive attitude equips our pupils with the confidence, resilience, discipline and skills for achieving their full potential in life as well as encouraging them to lead healthy lifestyles through their enjoyment of sport.
The study of PE in our school enables us to realise our vision of life in all its fullness by:
Growth - Resilience is necessary so children have a positive approach to new tasks, overcome setbacks and maintain effort. P.E. provides the perfect base from which children can develop their capacity to ‘bounce back’ from adversity.
Kindness - Empathy is at the heart of a nurturing & supportive environment. Through engaging in competitive sports and activities, children learn all about how to work successfully in teams and how to support each other to succeed.
Joy - By fostering a positive whole-school culture - promoting healthy behaviour and desiring success for all - we are able to empower our children to aspire to be the best they can be.
Integrity - Respect and fairness is at the heart of our lesson planning considerations. By encouraging positive peer interactions, the children soon learn the important value of respect within sports, and school life. Our children learn to develop their leadership and teamwork skills through a wide range of lessons and competitive activities; this encourages them to develop these transferable leadership skills and take responsibility in other areas of school.
How we deliver it:
Inspiring all to be physically active and engaged in competitive sports and activities is the key purpose of our P.E. curriculum.
Our P.E. Subject Overview breaks down the National Curriculum objectives for P.E., including how children develop specific skills in each topic. We follow the Merton SSP PE scheme, which includes suggested differentiation and key questions for students.
Class teachers deliver two hours of PE to their class each week, focusing on all aspects of the curriculum. This includes: invasion games, net and ball games & target games as well as gymnastics, dance and athletics.
Swimming provision is delivered by trained professionals when the children are in Year 4. We offer catch-ups sessions to anyone who has missed this or is not a confident swimmer by Year 6.
There are further opportunities during the school day for teachers to inspire their classroom to be an active one. We know that a culture of active learning is a powerful way to promote an active lifestyle.
Enrichment: Extracurricular activities provide children with a diverse range of sporting opportunities: we offer a number of clubs, led by staff members and outside providers. We offer free/discounted places for PPG children so that all our children have access to enrichment opportunities and to find their own passions and interests.
Competition remains an important part of P.E. and we help the children to develop their teamwork, leadership and other skills required for healthy competitiveness. Within school, we enjoy our half-termly House sports competitions, where the children compete in the sport they have studied that half-term in their houses. The house winners are then announced in a whole school assembly.
Our annual Sports Day encourages competition between individuals, classes and year groups. The day is structured so that all children actively take part in sports through a carousel of active challenges before ending the day on individual and team races. In addition to these school-wide competitions, skipping challenges are well received, as is the Mini World Cup.
Finally, through our involvement with Richmond School Sports Partnership, we are afforded plenty of tournament and league opportunities within the borough. We believe it is important, in line with our school vision, that all are afforded the chance to compete and represent the school, but it must also be recognised that our most able children are given their chance to shine and develop their talents.
How we know we are doing it well:
Raise the profile of PE and sport across the school and use that to continue to develop positive attitudes and whole school improvement.
All children enjoy a high-quality PE curriculum which inspires them to actively take part and progress in a range of physical activities.
In P.E., teachers will assess the progress of children in their classes or year group as appropriate. This will be through ongoing formative assessment throughout the year - inspired by the Head, Heart, Hands approach of Merton PE - and through a summative judgement on the end of year reports.
The subject leader will monitor the teaching and progress of children in the subject through observations and discussions with teachers and children. Feedback will be given to teachers and children as appropriate.
Surveys of children and teachers will be used to monitor attitudes to the subject and at relevant points during the year.
Develop the confidence, knowledge and skills of all staff in teaching PE and Sport.
Training will be delivered to teachers by the P.E. leader and/or external providers, throughout the course of each academic year and subject leader monitoring will ensure that individual support is given to teachers when they need it.
Children display the values that they have learnt through sport - e.g. respect, resilience - and go on to display leadership skills and become role models for their peers. This will enable St. John’s to truly be a healthy and active school.