Harlands Primary School

Physical Education

Principles for Physical Education learning at Harlands

Physical Education at Harlands aims to provide all children with frequent opportunities to develop and maintain their physical fitness, whilst developing their understanding of the valuable life skills that are developed when regularly engaging in exercise and sport.

The key aims of our PE curriculum and inter-school sports competition offerings are:

  • to provide regular opportunities for children to be active
  • to develop every child’s understanding of the role exercise plays in a healthy lifestyle
  • to improve every child’s levels of agility, balance, co-ordination, speed, agility, quickness and tactical awareness
  • to improve every child’s levels of perseverance, patience, self-confidence, respect for others, self-belief, empathy and determination; and their understanding of how PE and sport helps progression in these areas
  • to provide every child with the opportunity to experience as many different sporting activities as possible, in order to allow them to find an activity they really enjoy
  • to ensure all children are aware of the important roles leaders/coaches, officials and administrators play in sport, and the skills these roles involve

Organisation

  • The school’s long-term PE planning document underpins the curriculum-time PE allocations for all year groups.
  • All Key Stage 2 classes have two hour-long weekly timetabled PE sessions.
  • All Key Stage 1 classes have an average of two hour-long weekly timetabled PE sessions across the academic year; additional time is allocated in the summer term to supplement indoor sessions during the winter months.
  • Children are taught mainly in their class groups for PE. However, on some occasions, children may be taught in groups based on ability, experience or interest to facilitate a positive impact on pupil progress and child-safety.
  • Curriculum-time PE sessions are led typically by class teachers. On some occasions, the PE co-ordinator works alongside the class teachers to team-teach units of work.

Skills Development and Assessment

At Harlands, a bespoke PE curriculum has been developed that allows us to cover the objectives outlined by the National Curriculum within our own context.  Our curriculum allows us to fully utilise our extensive outdoor space, develop children’s leadership skills and prepare children for the wide ranging inter-school sporting opportunities we access.

Within our PE curriculum, there are six areas of focus:

(a) health and fitness
(b) skills and techniques – this area of focus is further broken down into activity-specific strands for Athletics, Multi-skills, Swimming, Gymnastics, Team Games/Challenges and Dance
(c) tactics and strategies
(d) sporting values
(e) coaching and leadership (e.g. Sports Crew pupil leadership team)
(f) engagement in competitive sport

The ongoing and progressive development of transferrable ‘multi-skills’ underpins all PE curriculum sessions and for this reason the following approaches are adopted:

  • the Key Stage 1 curriculum focuses mainly on multi-skills units of work
  • at least once a year, Years 1-6 all cover non-sport specific ‘multi-skills’ units in order to develop children’s transferrable skills
  • all Key Stage 2 year groups begin the academic year with Athletics to hone their running, jumping and throwing skills
  • the British Gymnastics Key Steps scheme is used across Years 1-6 to ensure progression, reinforcement and consistency

Enrichment Opportunities

The school has achieved Gold Kite mark awards for sport for several consecutive years.

Inter-school sport

At Harlands we aim to provide all children with as many opportunities as possible to participate in inter-school sporting events.

The school subscribes to Mid-Sussex Active (visit http://midsussexactive.org.uk/ for more details) and this allows us to enter teams into a range of local and county-wide sporting competitions and festivals.  Additionally, we are pro-active in organising – and frequently hosting - an extensive range of friendly matches and festivals to further increase the provision of sporting opportunities we provide.

Each year, the school runs teams in a range of sports, including: football, cricket, athletics, cross-country, hockey, netball, pop-lacrosse, new-age kurling, boccia, tennis, gymnastics, tri-golf, stoolball, rounders, handball, tag rugby and basketball.

Extra- curricular clubs and activities

Each term, the school offers a range of extra-curricular sporting clubs, making full use of all the school-site space available.

Some sessions are classified as ‘training activities’.  These are run by teachers (sometimes at lunchtimes) and are intended to help prepare children for inter-school sporting competitions and festivals; there is no charge for these clubs.  Other after-school clubs are classified as ‘chargeable activities’.  These are run by outside agencies/coaches.  Frequently run activities of this type include karate, cricket, multi-skills and Popsteps / street dance.

Community Links

One of the main aims of the school’s PE provision is to encourage children to engage in a healthy lifestyle.  Children are encouraged to extend their sporting experiences away from the school site.  Consequently, establishing successful school-club links and pathways is extremely important.

Over an extended period, the school has set up a number of successful partnerships with local clubs and many children have benefitted from these relationships.  These include:

Mid-Sussex Active - http://midsussexactive.org.uk/

Cuckfield Cosmos Junior Football Club - http://www.cuckfieldcosmosfc.co.uk/

Ansty Cricket Club - http://www.anstycc.org.uk/

Haywards Heath Cricket Club - http://haywardsheath.play-cricket.com/

Pop Steps dance - http://popsteps.com/

BPM Dance Academy - http://www.bpmdanceacademy.co.uk/

Haywards Heath Junior ParkRun - http://www.parkrun.org.uk/haywardsheath-juniors/

SAMA Karate - http://samaburgesshill.webs.com/

Haywards Heath Rugby Club - http://www.pitchero.com/clubs/haywardsheath

Marlow Sports (inclusive sports) - http://www.marlowsports.co.uk/