PE
At West Thornton, we believe that every child should enjoy a range of experiences within physical education and sport. Through our extensive curriculum, extra-curricular clubs and entrenchment opportunities, we promote positive attitudes to health and wellbeing, the development of fundamental skills and a love for being active.
During physical education lessons children follow personal learning journeys and a multi-ability approach to teaching and learning. Our curriculum equips children with the essential abilities to maximise potential, and enjoy long-term participation in physical activity and sport. Teaching and learning focuses on three main building blocks for every sporting action:
- Agility
- Balance
- Coordination
The curriculum encourages creativity, collaboration and self-challenge, through six themed units per year, known as ‘multi-abilities’ which include:
- Personal skills
- Social skills
- Cognitive skills
- Creative skills
- Physical skills
- Health related fitness
In Key Stage 1, children explore the multi-abilities skills through songs, stories and personal best challenges. Children begin to develop the notion of moving progressively through challenges until they reach the point of ‘failure’, then working collaboratively they ‘practice perfect’ until they can achieve consistent.
During Year 3 and 4, we begin to look at how skills can be combined, and their context in sporting activities. Children experiment with the ‘How?’ and ‘Why?’ of combined skills, collaboratively and creatively exploring the most effective ways of practising and performing more complex sporting actions.
Throughout Year 5 and 6, children consolidate and further develop their skills through a range of competitive activities, ranging from outdoor and adventurous team building challenges, to more traditional games such as tag rugby, cricket, netball, gymnastics and athletics.
Children will begin to explore strategies, tactics and techniques, and to develop the skills needed to decide when and where to apply them. They experience different roles in sport including coach, performer, official and team manager; developing a deeper understanding of rules and ethics.
