Physical Education (PE) provides children with opportunities to develop their physical skills, confidence and understanding while experiencing a broad range of activities and sports.

Our PE curriculum develops progressively from Foundation through to Year 6, building children's movement skills alongside their understanding of healthy lifestyles, teamwork, competition and their ability to evaluate and improve performance.

Developing Healthy, Active Lifestyles

Children develop an increasing understanding of the relationship between physical activity and a healthy lifestyle.

Beginning with recognising how their bodies feel during and after exercise, children learn why they need to stay healthy and how exercise affects their bodies. As they progress through school, they develop their understanding of warming up and cooling down, preparing for exercise and the importance of regular physical activity.

We encourage children to be physically active throughout the school day as well as through their PE lessons, providing opportunities for active play, pupil-led activities and competitive sport.

Dance

Through dance, children develop movement, coordination, creativity and expression.

Children begin by copying and exploring basic movements and responding to music. As they progress, they create increasingly complex sequences, developing their use of space, rhythm, dynamics and movement patterns.

Older children develop greater control, fluency and expression, using increasingly sophisticated dance vocabulary and evaluating their own work to refine and improve their performances.

Gymnastics

Gymnastics develops progressively across the school, building children's strength, flexibility, balance, coordination and control.

Children develop a growing repertoire of movements, including rolls, jumps, balances, travelling actions and floor movements. They learn to link movements together and create sequences with increasing control, complexity and fluency.

As they progress, children use equipment with increasing confidence and develop their ability to perform, evaluate and refine their gymnastic sequences. The progression document sets out particularly detailed development across these different gymnastic elements from Foundation to Year 6.

Athletics

Through athletics, children develop their skills in running, jumping and throwing.

Learning progresses from exploring different ways of moving, jumping and throwing towards increasingly refined techniques. Children develop their understanding of pace, speed, distance, accuracy and control and learn to apply their skills within different athletic activities.

As children become more experienced, they increasingly consider their own performance, refine their technique and compete both individually and as part of a team.

Games

Children develop the fundamental skills and understanding needed to participate successfully in a range of games.

From their earliest experiences of moving, controlling, kicking, throwing and catching a ball, children progressively develop their ability to pass, receive, attack, defend and make decisions within game situations.

They learn to apply skills within invasion games and striking and fielding activities, developing greater accuracy and control as they progress. Children also develop their understanding of rules and tactics, moving from following simple rules towards adapting tactics, creating games and taking greater responsibility within competitive situations.

Outdoor and Adventurous Activities

From Key Stage 2, children develop skills through outdoor and adventurous activities, including map work, trails, problem-solving and communication.

Children learn to orientate themselves, work collaboratively, communicate effectively and use maps and navigational information. As they progress, they tackle increasingly challenging activities and develop their ability to plan, evaluate and improve their performance.

Swimming

Swimming forms an important part of our Key Stage 2 PE provision.

Children are supported to develop their confidence and proficiency in the water, use a range of swimming strokes and develop essential water-safety and self-rescue skills. The curriculum progression includes swimming competently over at least 25 metres, using a range of strokes effectively and performing safe self-rescue in different water-based situations.

Evaluating and Improving Performance

Alongside developing physical skills, children learn to observe, evaluate and improve performance.

This begins with talking about what they and others have done. Children progressively learn to describe performances, identify improvements and evaluate the effectiveness of particular skills and techniques.

By Year 6, children are expected to evaluate their own and others' work thoroughly and suggest thoughtful and appropriate improvements.

Competitive Sport and Wider Opportunities

Physical activity plays an important role in the wider life of King’s Cliffe Endowed Primary School. Alongside curriculum PE, children have opportunities to be active during the school day and to participate in a range of sporting activities.

Our Sports Crew and play activity leaders support activities for other children during lunchtimes, while competitive opportunities within school give pupils opportunities to apply the skills they develop through PE.

We are also part of the Corby, Oundle and Thrapston School Sports Partnership, which provides opportunities for our pupils to take part in inter-school competitions.

Further information about how we use our PE and Sport Premium funding can be found on our Sports Premium page.

PE Curriculum Overview

Our PE progression document shows how children's knowledge, skills and physical development build from Foundation to Year 6 across healthy lifestyles, dance, gymnastics, athletics, outdoor and adventurous activities, games, swimming and evaluation.

Please view our Physical Education Curriculum Overview below to see the progression of learning across the school.