Curriculum Intent

At Leamington Primary School we believe that sport and physical activity play a crucial role in contributing to the health and wellbeing of our children. We also believe that sporting excellence and participation go hand in hand with academic standards, which is why we strive to deliver a wide range of activities in school which aim to engage and inspire all children.

We work closely with Liverpool School Sports Partnership to ensure children receive opportunities to take part in specifically planned sporting activities both in our school environment and in the wider community. We have used the Primary PE and Sports Funding to purchase our ‘Silver’ LSSP Membership Package to develop the skills and expertise of children and staff across all of the school, ranging from Reception through to Year 6. As part of the package, a specialist P.E. teacher works with groups of children on specific skills, promoting resilience and problem solving through physical activity.  These include Balanceability sessions for Reception, POWER sessions for Y6 and YOGA Bears sessions for a variety of children from varying year groups. We also offer after-school clubs led by skilled members of staff or other outside agencies, including: dance, netball and our newly formed girls and boys football teams and rugby team.  We access the BIKEABILITY training offered by Bikeright for School Improvement Liverpool, for our Y5 and Y6 children.  The training gives the children the opportunity to practise safe cycling in their local environment supervised and guided by experienced coaches.  For more information regarding the Sports Premium spend please see attached –  Sports Premium

The P.E curriculum at Leamington promotes physical health and wellbeing as vitally important factors in a child’s life.  The ability to learn new skills, and build upon the skills learnt provides children with an insight into their own abilities and how they can improve whilst giving them an understanding of the abilities of others. Therefore realising that we are all different, we progress at different rates, we should support and respect each other and work collaboratively during P.E sessions to learn from each other.

We want to enable children to become confident learners regardless of their ability, understanding our differences and embracing them. We are also very aware of when children need some extra support and we work hard to ensure the correct kind of support is put in place.

We want our children to understand that they can take part in physical activity anytime, anywhere, regardless of social, economic and financial factors.  Children should be aware that they can take part in physical activity without leaving their homes, using resources on offer to them and we encourage families to work with their children to achieve this goal.

  

Curriculum Implementation

Our Curriculum is supportive of the individual needs of the children in each year group in our school.  Learning opportunities and assessment for each year group ensure progression and repetition in terms of embedding key learning, knowledge and skills.  The scheme of work used in school (Primary P.E Passport) offers a wide range of lesson plans that cover a number of different skills, including, ABC (agility, balance and coordination), attack and defend, send and receive, striking and fielding and tactics and strategies. Plans to cover sport specific lessons are also included, which can be used for curriculum time or to help enhance after-school clubs. Children are given the opportunity to compare their performances with previous ones and demonstrate improvement to achieve their personal best.

Opportunity is given to engage in competitive (both against self and against others) and co-operative physical activities, in a range of increasingly challenging situations. Sessions allow time for children to develop an understanding of how to improve in different physical activities and sports and learn how to evaluate and recognise their own success.

We encourage staff to organise their own year group curriculums under the guidance of subject leaders.  By doing so, teachers are able to make meaningful cross curricular links, taking learning of a particular topic, out of the classroom to gain a different perspective and a deeper understanding.  For example, during our Year 5’s topic on the Egyptians, they took part in P.E sessions focusing on the importance of Dance in Egyptian history.  They then moved onto exploring solo, group and paired dances, head dresses and costumes worn for dancing and investigating Festival dancing and the reasons behind the celebration of each festival.

Every morning, all children in EYFS and Key Stage One take part in a ‘Wake up, Shake up’ or ‘Rise and Shine’ activity, highlighting the importance of physical activity and how a short burst can get us ready for the tasks ahead.  ‘Wake up, shake up’ starts from the very youngest children in our Nursery setting and continues through to Year 2.  Because we have started from the Nursery, all children are aware that ‘Wake up, shake up’ serves as a pre-cursor to settling down to work.

KS2 children use ‘alerting sensory breaks’ and ‘proprioceptive sensory breaks’.  This encourages children to stop working and take part in a short (5-10 mins) burst of exercise, preparing their brain and body for settling back down to work (alerting). Proprioceptive breaks encourage children to stop and take part in applied pressure exercises which make them aware of their body, and have a calming effect.

Children in Years 1-6 also take part in Active Maths which focuses on encouraging children to become active whilst taking part in maths sessions.  Year 6 children also take part in some of the Active Literacy activities.

We work closely with LSSP and our cluster schools to further develop the opportunities to enter competitions.  We are currently working with School Improvement Liverpool and a local secondary school, to share facilities which will enable children to take part in inter-school competitions, allowing them to meet children from other local community schools who they may meet again during their transition to Secondary school.

We strive to enrich our curriculum and offer children opportunities to take part in activities offered by outside agencies.  We have been part of the LFC Foundation and our boys team our currently second in their league table, had LSSP host a number of intra-sports competitions and our Y3/4 children are currently working with Everton in the Community.  They are tackling serious issues such as mental health, through the Mind initiative, 5 ways to wellbeing.  The initiative aims to promote resilience, determination and positivity through physical activity and an awareness of how physical activity impacts our health and wellbeing.

All children from Years 3-6 take part in weekly swimming sessions, taught by specialist coaches and designed to support all abilities.

We aim to ensure our pupils understand the importance of working together to support each other and solve their own problems, especially outside of the classroom.  We worked closely with LSSP and took part in the new PAL’s (Physical Activity Leaders) programme. A group of 16 Year 5 and 6 children were chosen to be trained alongside all of our Lunchtime Supervisors.  The children were taught the importance of physical activity and how it improved their mood as well as lots of fun activities to encourage others to get involved.  They work on a rota basis, using the resource cards included in the training, to offer children different ways to become active during lunchtimes.

We have worked alongside School Improvement Liverpool in the implementation of ‘Developing a progressive school curriculum to support the whole child in Physical Education’, and we have changed, updated and re-organised our curriculum to benefit the learning and progression of the children.

 

Curriculum Impact

Curriculum leaders at Leamington are given time to monitor their subjects on a regular basis.  This monitoring time involves lesson observations, discussions with staff and pupils regarding planning, timetabling of sessions, curriculum coverage and pupil voice.  This information is collated and presented to Governors at the end of the summer term, when it is fed back to subject leaders and any changes can be discussed and implemented in September.

Our close working relationship with both LSSP and our cluster school groups, is giving children the opportunity to take part in Inspire (competition) Aspire (development) and Festival (celebrate) level competitions, as well as specific SEND competitions (LSSP) and our work with other schools in the community will enable children to broaden their social circles and play against friends in a competitive situation.

All KS2 children leave with increased water confidence and it is our aspiration that they are able to swim 25m using a recognised stroke.

We are proud of the way our Lunchtime Supervisors and PALs have taken on the ‘active lunchtimes’ programme so enthusiastically and we are already noticing a drop in the number of lunchtime incidents reported.  Both adults and children are aware of the necessity of the programme and both spoke frankly and honestly to our LSSP specialist when she came to find out how the programme was running, in order for her to make changes that are specific to our school and environment.

We feel that our varied curriculum, opportunities to re-visit and build on skills learnt, willingness to work with outside agencies and School Improvement Liverpool means that we provide our children with opportunities to:

Access a range of extra-curricular sports;

  • Socialise with different peer groups;
  • Compete;
  • Be signposted to local, regional and national clubs;
  • Understand the benefits of leading a healthy active lifestyle.

Wider Opportunities

The children have attended competitions including Dodgeball, Football, Matball, and Athletics.

Several groups of SEND children have taken part in a SEND inclusive Festival and will attend a Boccia and New Age Kurling Development Competition later this term.

We have also taken full advantage of the opportunities provided by the two amazing Football clubs in our city with all year groups working with coaches from the Jamie Carragher Foundation and Y3/4 working with Everton in the Community, and we hope to build on these links in the future.

We have achieved the Gold School Games Mark for Sports.

All of these activities have been funded or partly funded by the Sports Grant.

For a breakdown of after-school provision please contact Mrs. Bland (KS1) and Mrs Nickson (KS2) (PE Subject Leaders) on 0151 284 7848.

Take a look at our Extracurricular activities timetable

Important documents:

 

PE Kits

Every child has been given their own PE kit, shorts, t shirt and a jumper.

EYFS

Key Stage 1

Key Stage 2

Sports Council

Meet our school’s sports council. We are going to meet every half term to discuss competitions, tournaments and after school clubs. These children will help organise sport’s days and have a role in giving our sport’s certificates out every Friday in assembly. They all promote great sport’s values, healthy competition and promote great team skills. We can’t wait to get started!

 

Year 5/6 Girl’s Football Team

Meet our Year 6 girls football team. All these girls work so hard! They make us very proud!

Year 5 Boy’s Football Team

Meet our Year 5 boy’s football team! They work incredibly hard and are a great team! They train well together and encourage each other during competitions. You make us very proud!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Return to Curriculum Areas