Physical Education
Our Approach to PE
At the Marist, we aim for Physical Education to engage, develop and challenge our pupils. We believe that PE should have long-term goals in promoting and encouraging children to develop a healthy and active lifestyle, which they will continue beyond their primary school years. Our lessons enable our children to become physically literate in the key fundamental movement skills (agility, balance and co-ordination) and to become physically confident with supporting their own health and fitness.
At the Marist, we have a progressive curriculum with lessons and topics that build on previously taught skills. We allow the children to understand what quality physical activity looks and feels like and how, with practice, they can improve their skills sets to reach higher quality outcomes. Our PE lessons also provide our children with the opportunity to experience a wide range of activities and sports, some of which they may not have had the opportunity to experience outside of school.
Our Physical Education consists of a combination of teacher taught and sports coach-led lessons. Children will have a weekly lesson with CM Sports (UK) Ltd; a school sports provider who provide a complete sports experience in line with the National Curriculum. Children will also have a teacher-led lesson using the Jasmine platform by Create Development, which includes Real PE, Real Gym and Real Dance. Here the children are taught fundamental movement skills whilst including a particular focus on Real PE’s “Personal, Social, Cognitive, Creative, Physical and Health & Fitness cogs”.
EYFS and KS1 pupils will learn basic fundamental movement skills and will be introduced to games, dance, gymnastics and athletics activities. They will engage in competitive (both against self and against others) and co-operative physical activities, in a range of increasingly challenging situations.
Lower KS2 pupils will begin to experience a range of gymnastics, dance, invasion games activities and striking and fielding activities. They will be able to demonstrate basic movements and begin to link skills together to work towards an intended outcome. They will start to understand the requirements of working within different group dynamics. They will also take part in swimming lessons so that they can demonstrate a range of strokes, swim distances and perform safe self-rescue.
By the time pupils reach Upper KS2, they will have a deep and varied PE experience. They will be able to call upon an extensive range of skills and link these together to perform more complex movements and tasks. They will have the confidence to work well within a variety of group dynamics and apply tactical and strategic thinking in a range of contexts under pressure. At this stage, we encourage the children to self-reflect and evaluate both their own performance and the performance of others. Year 6 children attend a residential to experience a range of outdoor adventurous activities.
Children across the school enjoy additional PE activities such as the Daily Mile, Activall and various local competitions and fixtures; as well as a wide variety of extra-curricular and holiday clubs.