Our Intent
At St Teresa’s we believe physical education (PE) is an integral part of a child’s physical, emotional and mental education and also drives personal development. It sets out skills and attitudes that will help the children throughout life such as perseverance, teamwork, healthy eating and many more.
In EYFS, lessons are focused on developing different movement skills such as running, jumping, hopping, skipping and dancing. We additionally focus on children developing spatial awareness, listening and following instructions and learning a range of ball skills and balances. During this phase a priority is placed on children learning life skills such as resilience and teamwork.
In KS1, lessons are planned to develop fundamental movement skills and enhance their agility, balance, coordination and speed. Children develop an understanding of attacking and defending principles and play simplified sports and games. Children perform different dances using basic movement patterns and basic gymnastics routines.
In KS2 lessons are focused on developing a broad range of sport specific skills as an individual and as a team from gymnastics and dance to outdoor education such as orienteering. We focus on self-evaluation with children regularly evaluating their performance to understand their areas of strengths and weaknesses as both a team member and an individual. We believe it is important that the children are engaged mentally as well as physically.
Our Approach
All children complete two hours of physical education per week covering a wide range of activities and sports taught by our own specialist coaches. Children throughout the school regularly complete termly “personal best” challenges; these are targets the children look to improve each time and only compete against themselves. Children are assessed every half term on the sporting skills they have learnt. This allows us to identify children that need further support and children that have excelled and would benefit from further training sessions with a local sports club.
We have adopted an approach to our swimming curriculum lessons that involves year groups having intensive swimming lessons. We also target year 5 & 6 children that are not at the national expected level to attend a week’s worth of intensive swimming lessons.
We celebrate all children’s sporting success in school and out of school. We encourage children to bring their awards and share their success with everyone via termly assemblies and weekly newsletters.
All of our children in year 5 are taught and have the opportunity to become young leaders from leading activities and games to supporting physical activity at lunchtimes for all children, after school clubs and support staff at competitions and festivals.
Extra-curricular clubs and sporting activities
A wide range of after school clubs are available for children to access, allowing them to engage in additional sports outside of school hours. These include multi skills, gymnastics, football, athletics and many more clubs offered throughout the academic year. All children have opportunities to represent the school in inclusive tournaments and festival competitions.
St Teresa’s works closely in partnership the Merton Schools Sports Partnership as well as with other local primary schools organising friendly competitions in which best practice of sport and ideas can be shared between the PE staff and children. Children have opportunities to represent the school at tournaments and festivals competitions. As a school, we have enjoyed lots of success at competitions and ensure our children represent the school in a good manner by following our school values. We encourage and promote good sporting values, fairness and respect including our school core values in our lessons, clubs and in competitions we compete in and outside of school. The school has been awarded the Active Mark Platinum Award for outstanding PE and sport provision. This is the 6th consecutive year that the school has won this coveted award, reflecting a culture of outward looking and self improvement that defines our school as a whole.
Children are encouraged to get fitter, appreciate the importance of a healthy lifestyle and begin to understand how an active lifestyle affects their health and fitness. This year we are working on our Bronze Healthy Schools London Award.
Sports Premium
The government has allocated primary schools additional funding to provide additional opportunities within physical education. Click to see our Sports Premium action plan on how we intend on spending the money.
