Physical Education at St Barnabas CE First and Middle School

At St Barnabas, Physical Education (PE) aims to support the development of healthy active lifestyles and promote independence and leadership by offering a range of problem solving and creative activities for learning both inside and outside. These opportunities for physical activity can be seen through our offer of residential visits, forest school, extra-curricular sporting activities, sporting competitions and festivals, our Sports Leader roles and the variety of other learning opportunities within our curriculum.

At school the range of activities we provide at each key stage aims to promote fundamental movement skills, skills of independence, cooperation and a sense of well-being. Our intention is that the children’s knowledge, skills and understanding will develop and thrive in a safe and secure environment so that they can perform with increasing enjoyment, competence and confidence in a range of physical activities. Through providing a progressive range of collaborative and competitive individual, paired and group challenges, we aim to cater for the preferences, strengths and needs of every pupil. We actively encourage the children to respond appropriately and sympathetically to others, using focused language to further develop their work and the work of others. We aim to promote enjoyment and challenge through a range of physical, creative and expressive activities and opportunities in the hope that this will lead to a lifelong enjoyment of physical activity and positive attitudes towards maintaining a healthy active lifestyle.

 

Our Curriculum

Children at St Barnabas take part in a minimum of two hours of PE each week, with additional active playtimes, active lessons and active brain breaks. All of this supports the government’s guidance that children should be active for at least 60 minutes per day.

In EYFS, children focus on fundamental movement skills and developing confidence, balance and coordination.

In Key Stage 1, children build on these foundations through dance, gymnastics, games, athletics and simple outdoor adventurous activities (OAA). They learn to work both independently and with others, developing cooperation, agility and basic tactical understanding.

In Key Stage 2 and 3, pupils broaden and refine their skills across:

· Dance

· Gymnastics

· Games

· Outdoor Adventurous Activities (OAA)

· Swimming and water safety (Year 4)

· Athletics

They learn how to link skills, improve performance, work collaboratively and compete with confidence. As well as this, children gain an understanding of the positive effects of exercise on the body and the importance of leading an active lifestyle.