PE, Sport & Physical Activity

At Girnhill, we believe in providing children with a high-quality physical education curriculum which inspires all pupils to succeed and excel in competitive sport and other physically demanding activities. We ensure opportunities are provide to become physically confident in ways which supports their health and fitness, as well as helping to build character and embed values of fairness and respect. We recognise the key importance that physical education has in developing children’s self-confidence and self-esteem and how it can enhance wellbeing and mental health. Physical education is taught through the ambitious National Curriculum and the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework to support staff to plan small progressive steps in a specific coherent teaching sequence. We are ambitious in our expectations of all pupils, ensuring cross curricular links are made to develop children holistically. We map the National Curriculum and Early Years Foundation Stage Framework for physical education into a coherent and sequential progression model that outlines the substantive knowledge, disciplinary knowledge, vocabulary and sentence stems needed at each stage that will build cumulatively towards learners being able to use and apply their knowledge, skills and understanding across a range of physical concepts, making purposeful links.  At Girnhill Infant School, oracy is a powerful tool for learning; by teaching children to become more effective speakers and listeners we empower them to better understand themselves, each other and the world around them. Vocabulary is purposeful and progressive to allow children to develop their expressive language and leave school being able to articulate their understanding of physical education using the four strands of good talk. Technical tiered vocabulary is modelled through flashcards and teacher talk using ‘my turn, your turn’. Sentence stems are used to provide children with a model of how to speak like a sportsperson and scaffold their talk effectively. Questions are carefully planned in advance to target pre-empted misconceptions, address gaps in learning and enable children to develop their explanations of computational concepts.

Physical education is delivered by a specialist sports coach and carefully planned with the physical education leader. Oracy is woven throughout physical education as detailed in the progression grid. The progression grid outlines the oracy expectations of each year group within the four strands of good talk. It also includes the tiered technical vocabulary all learners need to acquire and use in order to talk like a sportsperson. This will be modelled using flash cards, teacher talk using ‘my turn your turn’ and opportunities are made for children to practice using the vocabulary throughout lessons in both guided and independent practice. Suggested sentence stems are provided and used in order to scaffold responses. Opportunities for children to practise the skill of presentational talk will be further developed in physical education through the use of mode B learning such as providing critical feedback on a performance. All physical education lessons begin with a warm-up and end with a cool down. Health and safety rules are reinforced and adhered to throughout each lesson. Through using Rosenshine’s principles, learners have the opportunity to revisit and build on prior knowledge. Daily review is used at the beginning of every session in order to activate prior learning to attach new learning to. High-quality modelling of skills and language is offered to our children and scaffolds are provided for difficult tasks. Visual success criteria is provided for learners every lesson in the form of skill posters and physical demonstrations. All children are given the opportunity to experience competition. This is provided through lesson, intra and inter sports, clubs and teams, with the opportunity to set and work towards personal goals.

Learners have the knowledge and skills to perform like a sportsperson. Learners make sustained progress in PE and become physically confident in a broad range of physical activities during PE lessons, wrap-around time, lesson time and at out of school events, which supports their health and fitness. Children are inspired, motivated to excel and compete in a many different sports. Learners understand the importance and impact of an active lifestyle now and in the future. Pupil voice from lesson observations and floor books show that children can talk like a sportsperson, about PE knowledge and skills, vocabulary and their health.