The study of physical education is concerned with fitness, healthy lifestyles, and performing a range of sporting activities. Active participation in gymnastics, games, athletics, dance and swimming is essential to PE. It is a key part of children’s broader wellbeing with PE supporting teaching and learning around healthy eating, hygiene and body image.
As a result of our PE curriculum, learners will gain knowledge of their bodies and the risks and benefits of exercise and physical activity. Gross motor skill development, spatial awareness, control, coordination and precision are developed through increasingly complex tasks, games and sports. Learners will develop an understanding of the responsibility they have for their own personal health and fitness, including the risks and benefits of a range of physical activities. They will understand the connection between physical and mental health through competitive and non-competitive activities.
Our aspiration is that children are inspired to lead healthy and active lives both in and out of school.
To be successful, learners must:
- be physically active and engage in competitive and non-competitive sports and activities for sustained periods of time;
- develop competence in a broad range of physical activities;
- use appropriate vocabulary and subject-specific terminology;
- develop positive attitudes to physical endeavour including perseverance, fair play and sporting behaviour, and the ability to cope with success and failure;
- develop the ability to adapt and apply knowledge, skills and concepts through a variety of physical activities;
- develop positive attitudes to health, hygiene and fitness and learn how physical exercise affects the body;
- develop communication skills and the skills necessary for effective co-operation;
- understand the need for safe practice in physical education and how to achieve this;
connect learning within aspects of PE and between PE and other subjects (e.g. science and RSHE).
Implementation
EYFS Physical Development
Physical activity is vital in children’s all-round development, enabling them to pursue happy, healthy and active lives. Gross and fine motor experiences develop incrementally throughout early childhood, starting with sensory explorations and the development of a child’s strength, co-ordination and positional awareness through tummy time, crawling and play movement with both objects and adults.
By creating games and providing opportunities for play both indoors and outdoors, adults can support children to develop their core strength, stability, balance, spatial awareness, co-ordination and agility. Gross motor skills provide the foundation for developing healthy bodies and social and emotional well-being. Fine motor control and precision helps with hand-eye co-ordination which is later linked to early literacy. Repeated and varied opportunities to explore and play with small world activities, puzzles, arts and crafts and the practice of using small tools, with feedback and support from adults, allow children to develop proficiency, control and confidence
Toddlers and young children will be learning to:
- Enjoy moving when outdoors and inside.
- Pass things from one hand to the other. Let go of things and hand them to another person
- Gradually gain control of their whole body through continual practice of large movements, such as waving, kicking, rolling, crawling and walking.
- Clap and stamp to music
- Fit themselves into spaces, like tunnels, dens and large boxes, and move around in them.
- Enjoy starting to kick, throw and catch balls.
- Walk, run, jump and climb
- Spin, roll and independently use ropes and swings (for example, tyre swings).
3 and 4-year-olds will be learning to:
- Continue to develop their movement, balancing, riding (scooters, trikes and bikes) and ball skills.
- Go up steps and stairs, or climb up apparatus, using alternate feet.
- Skip, hop, stand on one leg and hold a pose for a game like musical statues.
- Use large-muscle movements to wave flags and streamers, paint and make marks.
- Start taking part in some group activities which they make up for themselves, or in teams.
- Increasingly be able to use and remember sequences and patterns of movements which are related to music and rhythm.
- Match their developing physical skills to tasks and activities in the setting. For example, they decide whether to crawl, walk or run across a plank, depending on its length and width
Children in reception will be learning to:
- Revise and refine the fundamental movement skills they have already acquired: rolling, crawling, walking, jumping, running, hopping, skipping, climbing
- Progress towards a more fluent style of moving, with developing control and grace.
- Develop the overall body strength, co-ordination, balance and agility needed to engage successfully with future physical education sessions and other physical disciplines including dance, gymnastics, sport and swimming
- Use their core muscle strength to achieve a good posture when sitting at a table or sitting on the floor
- Combine different movements with ease and fluency
- Confidently and safely use a range of large and small apparatus indoors and outside, alone and in a group. Develop overall body-strength, balance, co-ordination and agility.
- Further develop and refine a range of ball skills including: throwing, catching, kicking, passing, batting, and aiming. Develop confidence, competence, precision and accuracy when engaging in activities that involve a ball.