Physical Education

The intent of the Physical Education Curriculum

Physical Education at Sir John Leman offers a broad and balanced curriculum so that pupils have a high-quality physical education experience that inspires all pupils to succeed and excel in competitive sport and other physically-demanding activities. It provides opportunities for pupils to become physically confident in a way which supports their health and fitness. Opportunities to compete in sport and other activities build character and help to embed values such as fairness and respect.

Through providing an exciting, vibrant curriculum, we hope to ignite an interest in sport, being physically active and an understanding of how to become healthy.

Creating opportunities for challenge is to key to success in PE. Students are set at SJL in physical education, but within sets and groups there is still a range of abilities and confidences. Differentiated challenge in activities, drills, competitive situations and full game scenarios are vital to the progress of students, so that the most able, SEND and disadvantaged pupils are all making good progress.

Within the PE Department subject expertise and experience is used to develop exciting and engaging physically active lessons. Students are encouraged to take part in competitive sport both in and out of lessons to develop their confidence and character. One of the fundamental concepts of our PE curriculum is the development of movement competency within the different activities on the curriculum.

Developing personal character and cultural values, such as working as a team, respectful behaviour and positive communication, are key end points within each activity block. Physical Education at Sir John Leman encourages personal development within SMSC, fundamental British values, healthy living, citizenship, equality and diversity and preparing for the next stage.

The PE department have made links with the RFU and have developed their teaching of rugby with the help of RFU qualified coaches who have worked in the curriculum to promote the club link with Beccles RC. Other club links have been formed with Beccles Bombers (basketball), Beccles Cricket Club and the Black Dog Athletics club so that pupils have opportunities to be physically active outside of school.

How is the Physical Education Curriculum implemented?

Physical Education Timetable

• Pupils will get one 100min lesson of physical education a week.
• The academic year is split into winter activities and summer activities. From September to Easter is usually around 25 weeks (25 lessons). And the summer is shorter with around 12-15 weeks.
• Winter activities include football, basketball, netball, hockey, rugby, gymnastics, trampolining, dance, health and fitness and badminton.
• Summer activities include athletics, rounders, cricket, and tennis.
• The PE curriculum is balanced and varied so that students can develop both physically and academically. It strives to create a love of being physically active so that students have a lifelong affiliation with physical activity. By allowing students to be immersed in different activities, but do them for long enough so that they can see progression within the activity and across the year is vital. Our curriculum is designed so that students in years 7, 8, 9 and 10 do 5 different activities in winter and 3 in the summer. Getting 500mins of lesson time to develop and progress in their skills, knowledge and personal and cultural values. The year 11 curriculum is a sports leadership programme for all pupils.

Curriculum

The Sir John Leman High School Physical Education curriculum should honour and fulfil the community’s needs and its culture and heritage. Beccles is a rural town with links to the town’s community sporting clubs that are traditional team based activities of football, netball, rugby, basketball and cricket. Whilst the school’s curriculum should be proud to enhance these sports it should not be afraid to embrace the breadth and depth of study it currently has. It is important for an ever changing society to both embrace the old and welcome the new. With this in mind the PE curriculum tries to balance a breadth of activities with the importance of development and progress within each activity. To this end, throughout a student’s time in physical education they will experience both a variety of ways of thinking (colours) and a variety of activities within that field (shades) as you see below in the graphic, the ticks represent sports and activities that are currently either on the PE curriculum (lesson time) or accessed via the extensive extra-curricular programme that supports the PE lessons outside of timetabled lessons.

Core PE - KS3 – Yr7-9

The curriculum is organised into blocks where pupils will get five 100min lessons on a topic and have 5 topics in the winter and spring terms and 3 topics in the summer term. The blocks are made up of a mixture of team and individual activities that allow pupils many different ways of thinking. There are key end points for each topic in each year allowing pupils to progress through the topic and through the years. There are some activities that pupils will do in all years from year 7 to year 10, this is so that they are able to progress onto GCSE PE if they so wish, some examples are football, netball, badminton, athletics. There are other activities that cater for health, fitness and creativity and to create a broad and balanced curriculum, some examples are gymnastics, dance, handball and the fitness suite. We have chosen these topics as it combines the traditional values of the community of Beccles, with strong ties in team sports of football, rugby, cricket and netball, with the skill set of the PE staff being strong in both team and individual sports, leadership and driving cultural values in sport. Through the key end points pupils will develop not only skills, movement competency and knowledge of the sports, but also the personal and cultural values associated within sport that mirror British values.

Specific groups

The curriculum is designed to support all pupils:

MAP – setting is used to challenge the more able pupils so that the competition and challenge within a lesson is enhanced. Differentiation within a lesson also is a key factor of challenge (see implementation). The timetable is also designed for upper sets to be able to both access and succeed in GCSE PE at KS4 by introducing both team and individual sports early into the curriculum.

SEND – Setting allows pupils who find physical activities more difficult to work in an environment that offers appropriate levels of challenge from a similar ability of pupils. This promotes the feeling of success and achievement in PE lessons, without having a ceiling that they feel they cannot attain. Again differentiation is key to challenging the upper end of the class and supporting the lower and middle. The design of the lower groups’ activities within the curriculum differs slightly to give a more bespoke timetable, for example Tag rugby is used instead of full contact, Badminton is introduced later in KS3 due to the technical difficulties of the sport and Handball is offered as an activity that can be tailored to lower ability mixed gender sets.

PP – The curriculum is designed to be broad and balanced so that it gives all pupils, but especially PP students, a wide variety of activities and opportunities to try new sports that they may not have been able to otherwise. This dovetails with the extensive extra-curricular offer the department gives (see extra-curricular).

Changing facilities and kit

Sir John Leman Academy is a mainstream comprehensive school, with many pupils attending from Lowestoft, a largely deprived area. The department prides itself in allowing pupils to access Physical Education whatever their circumstance. We have a large amount of spare kit that pupils have to borrow if they have either forgotten or do not have a particular item of school PE kit with them. A strict PE uniform policy means that all pupils regardless of background have the same kit. This not only improves behaviour, it empowers all pupils especially PP student. There are many cases where the PE department will loan or give full kit to pupils who financially struggle.

Extra-Curricular enrichment activities

The department offer an extensive programme each half term to supplement, extend and enrich the timetabled curriculum. All pupils are welcomed to attend any and all clubs put on at lunchtime and after school. This greatly extends the offer and opportunity that pupils at SJL academy get. For example, if a pupil does not get trampolining in their timetabled curriculum they can access this in an after school club.

MAP – Extracurricular clubs and fixtures allow the more able pupils to further extend their knowledge and understanding of different sports. SJL Academy enters area, county and national competitions for a myriad of sports and activities. Again this will promote good impact at KS3 and KS4 (GCSE).

SEND – SJL PE is an inclusive department that offers access to all clubs. It also puts on specific events targeted at SEND pupils to enhance their opportunities. For example, we enter disabled tramploining, Boccia and wheel chair competitions, area sports competitions that are specifically designed for improving mental health and entry into sport for those who do not participate outside of school.

PP – these students have a wide variety of free activities after school that they can access. Competitions are also designed especially for PP students.

Implementation

Curriculum overviews and 5E’s end points for all activities for all years are available so that teachers can follow and use to help differentiate their teaching. There are also knowledge organisers for different sports and activities for the pupils. These only provide a framework for the knowledge, skills and understanding pupils should be gaining. This will allow consistency across a key stage when there is a change of teaching personnel.

Schemes of work and powerpoints for GCSE and A level courses are also on staff drive and are there to give teachers a guideline to follow. These lessons will need to be adapted to cater for SEND in a particular class.

Outline of Key Stage 5 lessons delivered by each member of staff can be found on shared documents so that pupils can catch up any missed work.

The Sir John Leman Sports Leader Award scheme of work can also be found on the staff drive along with additional resources.

Delivering Quality Physical Education lessons

At Sir John Leman Academy we want all students to enjoy PE lessons and feel success and challenge in their lessons. To this end there are certain key aspects that all PE lessons should deliver:

• Students should be physically active throughout the lesson. In that teacher talk is kept to acceptably low levels so that students can gain as much practice and activity as possible, but can also gain insight and feedback from the teacher to progress
• Challenge is of the upmost importance. All levels of ability should be challenged by what they are doing. Differentiated tasks should allow for students to be successful, but also build resilience from having to try hard to achieve.
• End points – students are aware of the end points and what they are assessed on so that they can work towards these. However, these are not designed to be limiting, but more a guide to what is expected at that age group. Students will be encouraged and challenged to go beyond the end points if they are able. Also end points should not narrow what is taught and the teacher has autonomy to be diverse with lessons depending on the group.
  
  Curriculum Road Map - PE

How is it assessed?

Impact – Assessment

Core PE (Year 7-9)

• New to 2022 is the 5 E’s Assessment for Year 7 to 9.
• The 5 E’s represent Entry, Emerging, Expected, Exceeding and Exceptional. Each sporting topic has specific end points for each of the 5 E’s. These are split into Skills, Knowledge and Values. See example for Year 9 football below:
   
• As the students move through the years the curriculum gets harder. Therefore a pupil who achieves ‘expected’ in year 7 will most likely achieve ‘expected’ in year 8 and 9. This would demonstrate that the pupil has progressed as they have maintained the ever increasing demands of the expected end points.
• SOW are sequenced with the end points so that pupils progress, and do not cover the same topic from one year to another. Similar drills in sports will be used throughout the year groups, however adapting the drills (differentiation) is a key component so that greater challenge is placed on them as pupils move through the years.

How can I help my child?

• Encourage children to attend extracurricular sporting activities at school
• Where possible and interest lies join a sports club outside of school too