P.E. Curriculum Statement

At Radcliffe on Trent Junior School, we aim to provide a PE curriculum that pupils enjoy. Through positive experiences in P.E. and school sport, our intent is to build lifelong habits that encourage all pupils to be active throughout their lives.  

We encourage pupils to become physically confident as well as giving as many opportunities as possible for pupils to represent our school in sport. Our P.E. curriculum helps to embed our school values which are underpinned by fairness and respect.

The national curriculum for PE aims to ensure that all pupils:

• develop competence to excel in a broad range of physical activities
• are physically active for sustained periods of time
• engage in competitive sports and activities
• lead healthy, active lives

Connect with Learning

Our P.E. curriculum encourages children to develop their interests and talents by providing them with a broad curriculum. Our children are encouraged make connections about how their skills and abilities progress and how improvement can take time and personal effort.

Our high-quality P.E. lessons build on previous learning and inspire pupils to be active as well as encouraging the development of physical, social and mental skills. In this way, we foster the development of resilience and the skills and mind set learned in PE and competitions can be transferred to daily life and other school subjects.  In particular, the challenges of competitive events teach our children positive social and emotional skills and coping strategies that can be hard to replicate in the class room. 

Connect with our community

Our pupil voice, via class sports representatives, is used to shape our offering of extra-curricular clubs and to help pick competitive events to engage in. Our children are always encouraged to join in with our focus being on positive experiences in P.E. and School Sport. Representing the school in competitions allows our children to feel a fantastic connection both with their team and with the wider community attending. Competitions and clubs allow pupils to recognise the skills and abilities of others and promote mutual respect. 

Connect with others

Our P.E. sessions, school sport and active lessons are strongly linked to our school's Be Values, which were developed by our whole school community.  In particular, the values of respect, empathy towards others, happiness, kindness and doing your best are interwoven in everything that we do so that our children are able to develop and communicate their thoughts, ideas and feelings.  This connection enables our children to develop a sense of themselves and others so that they can positively appreciate differences and recognise strengths.  

Curriculum Implementation

Children are taught regularly by both teaching staff and a sports coaches. Our coaches also provide our teaching staff with regular CPD.  The curriculum is further enhanced by participation in numerous sporting clubs after school and during lunchtimes.

As an Active School, we aim to ensure that the children participate in active lessons outside of their regular PE lessons. This involves incorporating moments within lessons whereby the children can be active so that we achieve between 20-30mins in class during the school day. 

We follow the guidelines set by the national curriculum to ensure we offer a range of PE activities that allow each child to feel challenged and offer opportunities to progress further.

Pupils apply and develop a broader range of skills, learning how to use them in different ways and to link them to make actions and sequences of movement. They enjoy communicating, collaborating and competing with each other. They develop an understanding of how to improve in different physical activities and sports and learn how to evaluate and recognise their own success.

Pupils are taught to:

• use running, jumping, throwing and catching in isolation and in combination
• play competitive games, modified where appropriate [for example, badminton, basketball, cricket, football, hockey, netball, rounders and tennis], and apply basic principles suitable for attacking and defending
• develop flexibility, strength, technique, control and balance [for example, through athletics and gymnastics]
• perform dances using a range of movement patterns
• take part in outdoor and adventurous activity challenges both individually and within a team
• compare their performances with previous ones and demonstrate improvement to achieve their personal best.

Swimming

Year 4 attend swimming lessons during the autumn and spring terms. During the summer year 6 and some year 5 pupils take part in booster swimming lessons to ensure that as many pupils as possible leave our school able to swim at least 25m on the front and back and perform a self-rescue.