The P.E. Curriculum at St Thomas'

At St Thomas’, we deliver a rigorous, progressive and balanced P.E. curriculum based on conceptual knowledge and key skills that aims to challenge and inspire our children to lead a lifelong healthy and active lifestyle. Our carefully sequenced P.E. curriculum, with foundations skills at its core, is organised coherently ensuring children revisit and build upon their knowledge and skills taught in Reception to Year 6. Each unit has been carefully selected to allow pupils to apply their growing skills, knowledge and understanding in a range of contexts. Our curriculum extends beyond our PE lessons; the daily mile, extra-curricular clubs and sporting competitions are all vital parts of our ‘PE, School Sport and Physical Activity’ provision. We ensure that all pupils have a chance to compete regularly as part of their curriculum through consistent monitoring and tracking of attendance. Alongside physical development, our school Sporting Values of ‘Respect, Friendship, Courage and Excellence’ are consistently taught through our curriculum.

Excellence

Excellence permeates in our P.E. curriculum through the high standards of teaching and learning from Reception to Year 6. Teachers receive regular CPD as well as an abundance of pedagogical resources via the Primary PE Passport App to enable them to teach quality P.E. lessons with confidence. In addition, we carefully monitor, organise and upkeep physical resources such as rackets and inflated balls. All of this ensures that within our lessons, competitions and clubs, our pupils can effectively develop a broad range of knowledge skills which enables them to become competent and enthused performers. Our pupils are taught to self-assess their skills and knowledge against the lesson goals, enabling them to identify strengths and work on targets.

Through intra and inter-school competition, we offer all our children valuable opportunities to engage and excel in competitive sport. At St Thomas', we promote excellent outcomes for all. We take great pride in our gymnastics and swimming success, both of which are at the heart of our curriculum. All children from Reception to Year 6 have at least one unit of swimming and gymnastics each academic year. This priority is vindicated by our success at local and county-wide levels. In addition to providing elite performers opportunities to thrive, we carefully track assessment data to ensure that every pupil meets the ‘Swimming and Water Safety’ standards by Year 6;  extended provision is targeted to those who need further support to achieve these. 

Experiences and Life Skills

Through our curriculum, we aim to broaden horizons delving into a range of sports to allow children to experience life in all its fullness. This includes our diverse curriculum which encompasses all the key area of P.E. such as games, dance, gymnastics and athletics.

Our ultimate aim is to inspire our children to lead healthy, active lifestyles. We purposefully introduce pupils to a range of sports, including fencing in order to develop their cultural capital. We believe exposing children to a variety of sports will give them the confidence and inclination to try new sporting activities beyond school. We focus on the social and emotional aspects of Physical Education to encourage and motivate pupils to enjoy lifelong physical activity.

We want our children to understand the positive impact physical activity can have on our mental health. We explain the purpose and value of the daily mile upon their physical and mental health and ensure that this is prioritised in our school day.   

Celebrate Diversity

Our school is split into four teams to encourage frequent inter-school sporting competition. Each of our teams are named after one of our school sporting values. These include the Olympic values of Excellence, Friendship and Respect (which are also part of our whole school Lighthouse Curriculum) and one of the Paralympic values, Courage. We frequently refer to these in lessons, and they are included in every knowledge organiser.

Opportunities to compete in sport and other activities build character and help to embed values such as fairness and respect which enable our pupils to celebrate diversity. Each year group is assigned a sporting icon to study. The list of people has been chosen carefully in order to celebrate diversity and inspire all of our pupils. Our curriculum is inclusive, with provisions and resources available for all.

Christian Values

Our vision, “Let your Light Shine,” is rooted in the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:16 and reflects our belief that every child is uniquely created and deeply valued. The lighthouse symbol, central to our identity, reminds us that Christ is a constant light and guide. Through our Lighthouse curriculum, we nurture, support and inspire each pupil so they can discover their God-given uniqueness, find their path and shine brightly through their learning, actions and relationships. These values are reflected in our sporting life, where half of our school Sporting Values focus on our Christian values of friendship and respect. Within PE and sporting activities, we actively encourage these values through both competition and collaboration, while also promoting responsibility through participation in team sports and integrity through fair play. Year 6 pupils are given the opportunity to become Sports Leaders, allowing them to take on an important role within our PE programme by helping to maintain equipment, supporting activities and representing their house teams, developing leadership, service and pride within our school community.

Reading and Vocabulary

We explicitly teach subject-specific vocabulary for children to learn and apply during our lessons. These are referred to throughout lessons and have been planned to ensure progression throughout the school. Retrieval tasks are carefully designed to recap vocabulary taught in previous lessons.

Our pupils will read biographies (about their class sporting icon) and sport related non-fiction texts in guided reading sessions. We recognise this is a purposeful opportunity to further inspire our pupils, and make links between curriculum areas.

Knowledge Rich and Academic

With a progressive, knowledge and skills-based approach, we inspire pupils to be the very best version of themselves enabling them to assess and improve their own performance. As well as learning sport-specific knowledge (rules, tactics and techniques), children will be guided in developing their understanding of a variety of sports and physical activities which will lead to transferrable knowledge across the curriculum. Children will also be taught the importance of physiology (what happens to the body and the benefits of exercise), psychology (how we can motivate and work as part of a team) and biomechanics (the science behind how the human body moves through muscles, ligaments and our skeletal system working together) which will be referred to, explicitly and implicitly, throughout the curriculum.