PE CURRICULUM AIMS at GIA

At Glasshoughton Infant Academy experiences are at the heart of all learning where children have ‘hands on’ learning opportunities through real life objects, visitors or visits. Children are immersed in thematic learning based on an interleaving curriculum where new knowledge is taught, learned, remembered, revisited and applied by children ‘being’, for example being a Gymnast or Sports Person.

At Glasshoughton Infant Academy we believe that language development is vital for all children. We have high aspirations and support them to ‘be’ in their learning. The experiential and interleaving approach ensures that language is used by all stakeholders, including parents. Children develop good comprehension of the words they are using and are able to use them in context and accurately as part of their real learning.

We are a ‘talk rich’ school: talk is central to our curriculum and to the way our pupils learn. Children learn through talk. We believe oracy (the ability to communicate effectively) is a central means of extending pupils’ linguistic, social, emotional and cognitive development; it is key to the progress and attainment of all pupils across all areas of the curriculum.

Retrieval practice is planned for daily through ‘speak like an expert’ where children are expected to retrieve disciplinary knowledge that has been previously taught as a strategy to support them to move learning from the short term to the long-term memory.

At Glasshoughton Infant Academy we aim to strongly support both the physical and mental health development of every child.  We believe that children should be given a range of opportunities to develop a range of procedural and disciplinary knowledge  so that they can succeed in physically-demanding activities. We believe that through PE children understand physical and mental health and well-being.

To create:

• Successful learners who enjoy learning, make at least expected progress with some children making better than expected progress to achieve excellence.
• Confident individuals who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives.
• Responsible citizens who can make a positive contribution to society.
• Children who are physically confident.
• Children who understand fairness and respect for their peers.
• A progressive and coherently planned curriculum which engages children in authentic learning experiences that reflect the individual needs of all children, including disadvantaged and pupil premium, ensuring no child is left behind.
• A developmental curriculum which engages children in authentic learning experiences that reflect the individual needs of all children, including disadvantaged and pupil premium, ensuring no child is left behind.
• Children who are clearly able to explain and articulate their learning, using subject specific vocabulary and terminology.
• Successful learners who build upon previous learning in order to access new disciplinary and procedural knowledge, retrieving learning and applying it in different contexts. 
• Successful learners who build upon previous learning in order to access new knowledge and skills, retrieving learning and applying it in different contexts. 
• Confident communicators who are able to explain and record their learning effectively as a sports person.

It is essential that the PE curriculum is organised in such a way that it provides learners with the opportunity to learn expected behaviours and be successful in their learning so that we can deliver our mission and aims.

Strategic Intent

The breadth and depth of the curriculum is designed to:

• Create an aspirational high achievement culture which allows pupils to develop as confident, responsible citizens;
• Provide a progressive, coherent, structured, academic curriculum that leads to key concepts, ideas and knowledge expecting children to apply this through a variety of experiences and planned learning opportunities;
• To use physical development as a driver for other curriculum subjects;
• To provide cultural capital, so children have a deep understanding, respect and tolerance of the world around them;
• Take in to account individual needs and styles where ALL children experience success;
• Increase and promote the physical, mental health well-being of all children through the use of exercise;
• To further build the character of children through a range of extra-curricular opportunities.

Aspirational high achievement culture

We have developed two curriculum drivers that shape our curriculum, bring about the aims and values of our school, and respond to the particular needs of our community:

• Aspirations – which help pupils to know their future possibilities and build aspirations for their lives.
• Experiences – The school provides memorable experiences which help children to engage actively in their learning by providing real ‘hands on’ experiences, supported by exploration and investigation to make links and sense of their learning, supplemented by shared experiences provided by visitors and visits to the wider community, to link to the wider world.

Coherently planned academic curriculum

Underpinned by our two curriculum drivers our academic curriculum sets out:

• A clear breadth of topics and outcomes that will be covered
• The procedural knowledge that children will learn alongside the disciplinary knowledge that they will gain.
• Criteria for understanding the progression and sequences of learning and concepts to support retention of key knowledge
• Criteria for depth of understanding through retrieval practice and new knowledge.

Cultural Capital

Cultural capital is the background knowledge of the world pupils need to infer meaning from what they read. It includes vocabulary which, in turn, helps pupils to express themselves in a sophisticated, mature way.

Individuals

The curriculum is designed for all children to maximise their potential through carefully planned and targeted teaching, where assessment for learning provides vital intelligence on what the next steps need to be for individuals to succeed in their learning. The developmentally progressive curriculum is designed in such a way that individual needs, strengths and next steps are built upon to ensure no child, including those who are pupil premium or disadvantaged, fall behind.

Sustained Mastery

Nothing is learned unless it rests in pupils’ long term memory. This does not happen, and cannot be assessed, in the short term. Assessment therefore answers two main questions: How well are pupils coping with the curriculum content? And how well are they retaining previously taught content? This is assessed throughout the lesson on a daily basis through assessment for learning where children’s understanding of key concepts is revisited, feedback is given and acted upon and has it been remembered is checked in future learning.

The impact of the curriculum is assessed at 3 assessment points:

• Assessment point 1 – 28th November 2022
• Assessment point 2 – 13th March 2023
• Assessment point 3 – 10th July 2023

This will support teachers to highlight clear next steps for individuals and support leaders in school in their professional dialogue around progress, CPD, subject knowledge, outcomes and lines of enquiry to follow. Impact of the curriculum is triangulated through the disciplinary and procedural knowledge and the ability to communicate the learning using a variety of methods and tools.

Curriculum Implementation

• Clear planned pathway to progress from on entry to nursery to the end of key stage 1 and beyond, accelerating progress in all sequences of learning.
  • Learning is most effective with spaced repetition
  • Interleaving helps pupils to discriminate between topics and aids long term retention.
  • Retrieval of previously learned content is frequent and regular, which increases both storage and retrieval strength.
• There should be depth before breadth.  Maximise learning time in all subjects and consider the subject knowledge and vocabulary required.
• Additional time is given to English and Mathematics to ensure that students have the essential skills needed for life and to access the full curriculum, especially harnessing reading as a tool for independent learning across the curriculum. Learning to read  is taught within a specific systematic synthetic programme to create effective readers and writers in all curriculum areas. PE contributes to the teaching of Mathematics by encouraging the children to count moves and actions they make, find numbers, read measurements and solve problems in a team.  Fluency within maths is also developed in warm up-matching exercises to counting in multiples of numbers.
• Targeted support and additional challenge to ensure all learners make at least national rates of progress from their starting points and over time.
• Effective communication is a vital skill which children are taught in order for them to demonstrate their learning from across the curriculum in a variety of different ways, including verbally and through written recordings. 
• High quality language is used and promoted at all times, including subject specific, tier 3 language, where children are expected to use this vocabulary accurately in context.
• ‘Speak like an expert’ is explicitly planned into every lesson to support daily and weekly retrieval practice where learning moves from the short term to longer term memory.
• ‘Sticky knowledge’ is key to ensure lessons are learning focused, with an emphasis on the development of children’s vocabulary. This allows children to confidently communicate their learning as a Sports person.
• Application of learning in a variety of forms allows children to demonstrate that their learning has been retained long term.
• Children are provided with many opportunities to practise their learning in different contexts to ensure it is embedded into the long-term memory.
• Ensure all students’ progress is in line with national expectations and learners and their teachers are ambitious to achieve more through deeper learning opportunities.
• Some of our content is subject specific, whilst other content is combined in a cross-curricular approach.
• Continuous provision, in the form of daily routines, replaces the teaching of some aspects of the curriculum and, in other cases, provides retrieval practise for previously learned content. For example, the importance of drinking water throughout the day.
• Suspended learning in blocks of time where core principles in a range of curriculum areas including, Healthy week, RE, SMSC & PSHE, Heritage weeks and Creative week allow children to spend a focussed block of time immersed in a depth of knowledge linked to all subject areas.
• To support induction and transition points across the Primary years for all learners and their carers
• The curriculum is further enriched and boosted through the wide variety of after curricular activities that are available for the infant children including sports clubs, craft and creative clubs, computing and coding club and cooking clubs. All children are invited to attend the clubs through an open invitation and specific children, including our most identified vulnerable children are contacted individually to ensure they are involved in at least one of our clubs.
• To sign post children and parents to further support talents identified during clubs and taught sessions.
• To decrease sedentary behaviours through the use of the daily mile,  HiT sessions and energisers and calmers,  therefore maximising learning time for all learners.

The Curriculum

We have a very broad Primary Curriculum covering 12 subjects meeting all the national curriculum requirements. The National Curriculum states that children should be taught to master basic movements, participate in team games and perform dances using simple patterns. Children access a weekly indoor and outdoor PE session.

Physical health and well-being is not taught in isolation at GIA but through a range of experiences including: – positive playtimes, the play leaders programme, the use of the Scrap Shed, Healthy Week, extra-curricular clubs, the daily mile, HiT sessions, enegisers and calmers, circle time and Science lessons.

Children will develop specific gymnastic skills, dance skills, ball skills, team game skills, interpersonal skills in each year group at GIA. This is outlined in long term planning to ensure progression and also to ensure that PE topics are revisited to commit knowledge to the long term memory.

Across the year children are taught a range of procedural and disciplinary knowledge using both the floor and a range of apparatus. Dance sessions are planned across the year and progressively throughout each year group.

Physical Education is taught in a cross curricular manner using techniques across the curriculum that the children are familiar with e.g. mapping, critique, maths fluency and responding to music as they learn through a variety of methods and learning styles. The transference of knowledge between subjects will then be seamless. PE contributes to the teaching of Science as children are encouraged to think about how their body works and understand how we, as Sports People, can physically and mentally benefit from physical exercise.

Physical Education is taught in a cross curricular manner using techniques across the curriculum that the children are familiar with e.g. mapping, critique, maths fluency and responding to music as they learn through a variety of methods and learning styles. The transference of skills between subjects will then be seamless. PE contributes to the teaching of Science as children are encouraged to think about how their body works and understand how we, as Sports People, can physically and mentally benefit from physical exercise.

Additional support is provided for children who are not meeting their targets through bespoke small group intervention led by highly skilled professionals, including physical development interventions that will impact all curriculum areas.  This is monitored through pupil progress meetings and SMART targets to ensure the impact of the intervention is as anticipated in a timely manner. 

Suspended learning – When the normal lesson timetable is suspended, take place during the year. These days/weeks  allow children to learn in different ways such as off site, with external providers or using different curriculum approaches. These days’ and weeks cover subjects such as Healthy Week and Children’s Mental Health Week.

Sequential learning sequences with clear planned learning objectives for all Physical Education lessons allows children to build on prior knowledge. A progressive and coherent curriculum ensures that current learning opportunities are based upon children’s previous learning, knowledge they have retained from previous lessons or the previous year group and links to year group expectations.

‘Sticky knowledge’ is carefully planned for each lesson across the curriculum, linked to the learning objective, and is progressive across a sequence of learning. This ensures that children are explicitly clear about what they are learning during each session and how previous learning will help them to develop new knowledge. Children’s learning is communicated to them clearly to allow them to develop an understanding of why they are being taught what they are being taught at that particular time; how previous learning will help them and what the learning intentions are at the end of the sequence. ‘Sticky knowledge’ also provides children with the correct vocabulary and terminology needed in order to effectively communicate their learning as a sports person.

A variety of strategies are taught at GIA in order to allow ALL pupils to become successful sports people as we have an understanding that not all children learn in the same way. This ensures that no children, including pupil premium and disadvantaged are left behind and achieve their full learning potential.   Home learning opportunities have been carefully planned and resourced, to ensure children receive the same carefully planned and progressive curriculum that is on offer at school. All children have a right to an education and we will not allow any child to fall behind. There is an expectation that home learning is shared with class teachers to ensure progress is being made. Children will be expected to share their learning with their class teacher via Tapestry or Class Dojo. Children will receive bespoke feed-back in response to their learning, in line with what they would receive in school, to ensure that excellent progress is being made and the ‘even better if’ culture that is being developed in school is being consistently applied and instilled in all pupils. 

Curriculum Impact

The impact of the curriculum is that by the end of the year, the vast majority of children have sustained mastery of the content, that is, they know more, remember more and do more. Some children will have reached a greater depth of understanding where they can apply their learning.

Children across school and from different groups can move confidently in a variety of ways, they can talk about both physical and mental health and what contributes to this. Children across school show drive and determination in physically demanding activities. Children can transfer curriculum knowledge between the classroom and physical activity sessions.

Children across school and from different groups can move confidently in a variety of ways, they can talk about both physical and mental health and what contributes to this. Children across school show drive and determination in physically demanding activities. Children can transfer curriculum skills between the classroom and physical activity sessions.

Children are clear about their learning and able to confidently communicate this using accurate vocabulary and terminology from across the curriculum.

An impact of a curriculum whereby children are taught to communicate in a variety of different contexts and for a variety of purposes and audiences, allows children to confidently communicate their learning as a Sports person both verbally and in the written form, using accurate vocabulary.

A developmentally progressive and coherent curriculum, whereby children build upon they prior learning and knowledge, ensures that no child, including pupil premium and disadvantaged, are left behind. All children have the tools to reach their full learning potential.