Vision 

Our children will enjoy taking part in activities which benefit their physical and mental wellbeing while enabling them to find areas of personal interest and satisfaction. Through exposure to a range of competitive and co-operative sports, children are encouraged to find new passions to pursue as they grow and develop, allowing them all to excel and thrive 

How is our curriculum unique to St Mark’s? 

At St Mark’s, we believe that water safety should be a significant focus within our PE curriculum as we live in a coastal region. Children therefore learn how to stay safe around bodies of water and how to respond in emergency situations. These lifelong lessons, which take place in the classroom, when the children attend swimming lessons, and when they visit the beach, will ensure our children are equipped with the necessary skills to keep both themselves and others safe. 

We offer a range of sporting opportunities, allowing children to try and experience new things. We recognise the activities usually tried outside of school, such as football, and seek to offer wider sporting opportunities to allow new passions to develop. This links with their personal interests, from learning break dancing skills in dance to trying ultimate frisbee in Sports Week. Children are then given the opportunity to show the knowledge and skills they have gained through competing both competitively and co-operatively in the wider community. 

At the end of Year 6 our children will be able to: 

• Share how their participation in PE benefits their physical and mental wellbeing and why this is important to leading an active, healthy lifestyle 

• Take part in competitive sports and be able to explain the value of sportsmanship 

• Recognise co-operative sports and understand the importance of these, working as a team 

• Explain the techniques used for a variety of sports and use key vocabulary to discuss this. 

• Understand the school games values and their meaning and implement these in both competitive and co-operative sport 

• Recognise and explain how they stay safe taking part in different sports 

• Explain how to stay safe around bodies of water e.g. at the beach, and know how to act in an emergency situation 

What does it mean to be a sports person? 

Sport allows us to try new things, stepping outside of our comfort zones and challenging ourselves. We learn to always seek our personal best, looking to improve. We are able to be competitive while learning to work in a team, communicating, supporting and motivating others. We learn to be active, looking after ourselves through fuelling our bodies correctly and taking care of ourselves, which is a lifelong skill. We develop passions which open up endless opportunities, from competing professionally to enjoying playing with friends and family.  

Being a sports person opens up many career possibilities, from being an Olympic athlete, to a journalist, to a physiotherapist, to a coach. More broadly, the wide range of skills that are learned through PE, from communication to empathy, will be beneficial in any career.  

Our curriculum 

At St Mark’s, we follow a skills-led curriculum that is inclusive for all pupils. We have established the main skills we wish for our children to accomplish during their time at St Mark’s, and these are repeated each year as they progress up through the school, building on the standard they have already achieved in previous academic years. As children transition from KS1 to KS2, they have the fundamental P.E. skills in place to then progress onto different skills, such as attacking and defending, alongside progressing onto more challenging standards in skills already taught.  

EYFS and KS1 skills: 

• Personal best 

• Participation, working with and against others 

• Co-ordination and balance 

• Mastering basic movements 

• Healthy lifestyles 

• Competition – evaluating and recognising success and improvements  

• Speed and agility 

• Character building – values of fairness and respect 

• Water safety 

KS2 skills:

• 1. Personal best 

• Co-ordination and balance 

• Attacking versus defending 

• Healthy lifestyles 

• Competition – evaluating and recognising success and improvements 

• Speed and agility 

• Character building – fairness and respect 

• Water safety 

• Adventure – Year 3 and 4 

• Swimming – Year 3 

To support the delivery of our curriculum, we use Get Set 4 PE, linking the aims with the skills of the national curriculum. We start the term focusing on the skill of personal best, where we encourage children to be the best we can be, ensuring all children are challenged and stretched; this then translates across the curriculum, where they focus on doing the best that they personally can. We also provide an environment where children are encouraged to participate and take part in teams, showing values of respect and fairness, competing to win whilst showing sportsmanship when they lose.  
 
A wide range of sports are covered during the lessons, giving children a breadth of experiences whilst helping them realise the skills they are learning are transferable across numerous disciplines – some also extending to classroom learning and beyond.

We follow 5 P.E. ingredients in each lesson, which all staff and children are familiar and aware of: 

1. Children are physically active 2

2. There is a clear learning objective 

3. Values of fairness and respect are present 

4. We aim for our personal best – to be the best you can be 

5. Children are independent and resilient 

This allows us to ensure that children are aware of what they are trying to achieve in each lesson, whilst staff are ensuring our ambitions as a school are being fulfilled in each lesson.