Intent

At Meadowcroft, we strive to inspire children to develop a love for sports and physical exercise. Through our PE curriculum, school values and passion for sport, children will learn and understand that physical exercise is an integral part of a healthy lifestyle and has vast benefits for both our physical and mental health.

Through a safe and supportive environment, children of all abilities will be motivated and encouraged to be involved with physical exercise. The curriculum is designed to support all children to become confident, prideful individuals who continuously strive to improve, communicate effectively, collaborate with others and enjoy competition.

Rationale

We ensure that the way we deliver physical education allows all children to gain the necessary skills to continue to strive for self-improvement. This allows a continued focus on exercise and sport in secondary school and beyond. The drive for self development is something we believe is not only important in PE but throughout the school environment. 

When pupils join us at Meadowcroft, they will have a very mixed range of abilities and knowledge of sport. Therefore, we believe it is important to begin developing the core skills from week 1 of PE. These core skills include balancing, catching, throwing, jumping, running and other core skills required across most sporting activities. EYFS also provides an ideal time to introduce children to rules, playing fairly and how to work with others; these are communication skills that are vital. By building these key skills, children are able to move on to KS1 with a brilliant foundation of knowledge. 

We continue to further develop these skills through KS1. The curriculum allows this by breaking each topic down into areas of skill with a loser focus on individual sports. By teaching in this way, children are able to focus on and develop key skills and then apply them across different sports. Children are also introduced to key vocabulary that will be used in PE throughout their education. We also believe that gymnastics and dance are vital during this time for children. It allows children to engage with ther bodies and develop body coordination. These activities also improve strength, flexibility, control, balance and ways of collaborating with others; all important aspects of sporting activities. 

As our pupils move into KS2, there is a stronger focus on sport-specific topics. This gives the children a chance to implement everything they have learnt and developed in KS1 into a sports scenario. Their experiences within physical education broaden by introducing new, more complex skills that are developed by reinforcing their existing skills from EYFS and KS1. Each lesson will focus on a specific skill and then how to apply it to a game situation. This way of learning offers methods of developing motor skills, cognitive aspects of playing games and affective outcomes by placing learning within game play and competitive situations. These game play situations offer an opportunity to promote moderate-to-vigorous level of activity which supports children physical health and fitness. 

The curriculum consists of a wide variety of different sports and activities. Within each topic, the focus will be on key skills and then, as they move through their educational journey, how we apply those skills to different sports. We aim to ensure that as our pupils progress; they gain access to different skilful components, develop their understanding of different sports, understand the importance of rules and fairness within sport, learn how to collaborate and communicate with others and develop a healthy relationship with competition. Meadowcroft also makes physical education an ideal setting for mental development including having a positive mindset, improving self-esteem and a growth in confidence though pupil lead activities and praise. By the end of their time at Meadowcroft, children have solidified the basic skills, have a good understanding how we implement them into different sports and have an understanding of how to improve in different physical activities and sports. We also hope they leave us having gained a life-long love for physical activity and sport that will stay with them beyond education.