Encouraging all of our children to be healthy and lead an active lifestyle is an integral part of the curriculum at Stockbridge Primary and Pre-School and starts with our 2 year olds in pre-school, where opportunities to be active and engage in physical games, support the children’s physical development, both gross and motor skills. Children are encouraged to choose from a range of healthy snacks each day and this is linked, by the skill of the practitioner, to the active choices they make.
This extends through to Year 6, by which time, children will have participated in a variety of sports, dance, gymnastics, orienteering, swimming, and other daring outdoor activities. The children are encouraged to play team sports both within school and against surrounding schools in order to foster a healthy sense of competition, gain experience with teamwork, and enhance their own performance.
Our PE provision is so effective that for 5 consecutive years, we have been awarded the Sports Mark Gold. This recognises a high standard of PE provision both within the curriculum and through extra-curricular activities.
It also takes account of the numbers of children who take up such activities and how many teams we have that represent the school at the competitive events. Our PE leader, Mr Taylor, ensures that we are always reflecting on the provision throughout the day too as we know long periods sat down become ‘hot spots’ of inactivity so our heat maps identify these and teachers then plan small physical activity to break these up and keep our minds and bodies active.
Outside of curriculum time, all children who leave us will have climbed, abseiled, caved, canoed, sailed completed numerous orienteering courses, learnt skills for hockey, rugby, basketball, netball, football, rounder, cricket and athletics to name but a few.
As part of our ‘cultural capital’ development of children’s wider world experiences, we ensure that there is never a barrier to taking part in these activities.
Some of our older children in Years 5 & 6 also form a team of ‘Bronze ambassadors’ who ensure every playtime and lunchtime are active. They are specially trained and can deliver small group games, obstacle courses, intra-school competitions and always organise the school’s ‘Sports Relief’ Day’ as well as being instrumental in ensuring our annual sports day is competitive and smoothly run.
In the early years our children will have the opportunity to learn many new skills, they will learn how to travel in different ways as well as begin to apply and adapt these skills to a different contexts. Our early years children will also further develop their understanding of what it means to be a resilient, collaborative and most of all, a proud learner.
Our year 1 children will continue to build on these skills. Children in this year group will learn more about why exercise is so important to live a healthy lifestyle and what changes happen to our bodies when we are exercising. Additionally, children will become more adept at applying their previous and newly learnt skills to a new situation or scenario including opportunities to play against other schools and experience game play.
We also really encourage the children at this point to begin to think about what it means to be a good team mate, how they can work efficiently to complete a task as this is applicable to all aspects of their learning in school.
In year 2 the children continue to build on those fundamental movement skills we have been teaching and embedding in the first two years of schooling but additional to this our children will start to master basic movements such as running, jumping and sending and receiving of objects. Children will begin to evaluate and reflect on their own work as well as make suggestions to help their peers flourish.
Year 3 is where the children really begin to establish themselves as an athlete regardless of their preferred sport. Our children work on continuing to develop their understanding of skills as well as beginning to freely choose the best skill in their repertoire to achieve a goal. In addition to all the fantastic work the children complete in year 3, they also begin to compete against each other in small sided versions of popular sports.
Inter-school competition is a big element of our PE provision and Years 4-6 have multiple opportunities to take part in competitive events against our cluster schools and experience full ‘game play’.
Year 4 is about consolidating what the children have learnt in lower school and ensuring that is all in place before beginning year 5 & 6. However this is not all year 4 entails, the children are given the opportunity this year to play slightly larger team games and are able to play around with the rules of the games to ensure their voices are heard within PE lessons. Year 4 also begins to approach the subject of how fitness can affect performance in different sports, we will regularly look at the question ‘what makes a good…’ this will lead to discussions about how we can be more successful in different sporting areas.
Year 5 is all about analysing our performances and deciding how to improve. Although this sounds straight forward this can be a really hard skill to master, it is one that takes patience and does require the children to really be critical of themselves. Children have the opportunity to look at pictures and videos of their performances and consider what could be improved, we also then work collaboratively to devise a training plan to improve these skills within our lessons.
Year 6 requires our children to be independent learners and consider a range of tactical approaches to different game based situations. Not only do the children have to decide on formations and their teams’ original approach, they also have to make quick changes on the fly to react to the flow and changes within the game. As well as these higher level skills, children in year 6 should enjoy competing and collaborating with each other.