Physical Education
At NS240°, we aim to set the standards within PE and make our delivery bespoke to each student’s needs.
P.E.
Intent
The Physical Education Department at North Star 240 recognises the importance of physical activity and sport for our young people with social, emotional and mental health needs. We aim to provide a broad and balanced PE curriculum offering sporting activity that is appropriate, ambitious and accessible. Students at our school often comment that PE is important to them, meaning we have a responsibility to provide a safe, nurturing and enjoyable environment where they can engage in a curriculum that offers them opportunities to improve their physical, emotional and social well-being.
Young people participating in PE lessons at North Star 240 gain confidence to attempt new challenges, use strategies to cope with setbacks, build successful working relationships with peers and foster personal and teamwork skills that can add value to their experiences in other curriculum areas and in their local communities. Delivering activity that is bespoke to students’ individual needs is central to our planning of lesson objectives, environment and equipment.
Students are aware of the high expectations we have for them if lessons are to be successful. There is a strong emphasis on consistent routines and role modelling of excellent sporting behaviour. We nurture pride in our physical effort, skill acquision and dispositions that can contribute to personal development and a growth mindset including resilience, perseverance, empathy and respect for others’ strengths and areas for improvement.
The PE curriculum builds on previous learning at North Star 82 by including familiar and popular invasion games, health related exercise activities, net and wall games, athletics, gymnastics and outdoor and adventurous activities. We seek to develop students’ interest, enrichment and experience of sport with opportunities to play fixtures, attend local sporting events and facilities to inspire them to live healthy, independent and active post 16 lifestyles.
This breadth of activity ensures an ambitious and accessible curriculum where every student can feel a sense of fun and achievement in every lesson. Skills, fitness and confidence are improved by sequencing lessons and linking previous learning so students understand the importance of what they are being asked to learn and the relevance of information to improve their own and others’ sporting performance.
Our department ethos is for our PE provision to provide a stimulating environment for each participating child, enabling the opportunity to deliver a positive impact on children’s lives. This approach is underpinned by supporting the required elements for a child to engage and learn through active participation. Sports and activity must encompass this and be delivered in a fun and positive learning environment for all.
Implementation
To ensure our PE curriculum intentions meets the needs of our learners individual physical and emotional needs, we ensure the following elements are core to planned lessons, schemes of work and selection of activities for long term planning:
- Providing an enabling PE environment where students feel safe to engage physically, emotionally and cognitively. Consistently applied set of rules for following instructions, listening to others and use of student strategies.
- Cementing lesson routines to include travel to activity space, introduction of lesson content, physical activity and plenaries to assess student understanding.
- Planning for the roles learning support assistants can fulfil to promote an enabling environment, student engagement, independence and skill development in practice and game situations.
- Inclusion of visual information on notice boards and whiteboard to support lesson objectives, key words and questions and previous learning.
- Questioning to assess students long term learning and linking of information to future delivery.
- Emphasis on high levels of physical engagement to improve health and fitness and the skills being practiced.
- Lessons that include practical demonstrations for our kinaesthetic learners, with opportunities to practice skills in small group and game situations to experience competition.
- Curriculum activity delivery ensures students understand game rules, behaviour expectations and sportsmanship to develop teamwork skills and experience other roles.
- A broad and balanced offer of curriculum activities provides opportunities to develop prior learning and experiences, but also opportunities for a variety of students to demonstrate their skills and components of fitness in other activities, building resilience to challenge and failure.
Curriculum delivery
- The PE long term plan includes delivery of a broad and balanced curriculum to include the core National curriculum activities – invasion games, net and wall games, gymnastic activities, striking and fielding games and athletic activities.
- All students in KS3 have x3 45-minute lessons of core PE a week. Students in KS4 have x2 45-minute lessons of core PE per week. Students choosing PE as a KS4 option have an additional x4 lessons per week including theory and practical sessions.
- Have tailored lesson objectives. To ensure all students can access the learning intent for the week’s lessons. This is supported by key success criteria and questions to consider.
- Personalised differentiation techniques used within planning and lessons.
- Consistency in routines including an introduction and warm up, skill development and plenary.
- Opportunities to perform other roles in the lesson including scoring, officiating and coaching to develop social and communication skills.
Impact
As a PE department at North Star 240, we consider the following demonstrates how our curriculum is working to ensure effective learning and personal development for our students. We continually review our practices, reflect on teaching practices, assess student experiences, understanding and achievement and evaluate our curriculum activities to ensure they are ambitious and accessible:
- Students awareness of safe learning environment and strict routines enables them to engage with consistent physical effort and make the best use of the lesson time available to develop health and fitness.
- Students improve their technique and skills in a range of curriculum activities, widening their scope to participate in sporting practice and competition more independently outside school.
- Students improve their range of sporting experience when engaging in a range of activities, learning about rules, scoring systems and sportsmanship.
- Students develop personal attributes and values that add value to their school and social experiences including respect, resilience, perseverance and empathy.
- Students improve their communication skills through sporting activity – speaking and listening to staff and peers, considering others points of view, reflecting and evaluating performance.
- Students learn how to cope with the emotional rigours of sport – fear of failure to complete tasks, failure when attempting tasks, losing in competition. Development and practice of strategies and use of these to build confidence and self-esteem.
- Students improve their skill related components of fitness – agility, coordination, reaction time and balance. These skills can add value to everyday tasks and link to other curriculum areas.
- Students will feel increasingly confident to engage in more competitive extracurricular sporting activity and enrichment in school fixtures and rewards trips.
- Students will gain physical and emotional confidence, leading them to seek opportunities in their communities to play and volunteer at local clubs.
- Students will develop knowledge and understanding in core PE and PE options lessons, enabling them to consider sport in post 16 education and employment.
- Students will develop an understanding of how physical activity and sport can contribute to lifelong physical, social and emotional well-being.
For more information contact: Scott.mitchell@northstar-academy.co.uk
