Intent
PE, school sport and physical activity (PESSPA) are an extremely important part of the St. Francis school life. Our PE curriculum is broad, planned, and progressive and has a real emphasis on developing physical, thinking, social and healthy skills throughout each school year. One of our aims is for every child to have represented St Francis in a competitive sporting event by the time they leave us for High School. We ensure this by encouraging: love and enjoyment for PESSPA and to value the skills and attitudes that sport and exercise bring. As a school we enjoy seeing children flourish and develop in confidence. Our children experience an extremely wide range of sports through PESSPA - we take every opportunity offered. We believe that PESSPA should lead to a sense of well-being, a greater understanding of a healthy lifestyle and a feeling of self-confidence.
Implementation
PE is planned, assessed and taught by a full time PE lead. The curriculum is carefully planned to include a range of indoor and outdoor lessons and to run alongside the School Games competition calendar where possible. The school use a scheme of work, combined with other resources and experience, to provide a varied, progressive learning programme which fits around the National Curriculum (2014). All children receive 120 minutes of engaging, high quality and enjoyable physical education lessons per week. P.E starts in the classroom with a brief introduction to the lesson, which includes the learning objectives for the unit or lesson and pictures and videos to enhance the pupils learning, provide role models and good demonstration. Lessons are adapted to support and challenge pupils and are often built around a gold, silver and bronze success criteria to reassure understanding and self-assessment for the pupils. In addition to the P.E lessons taught by our P.E lead we have outside providers who provide units of work for different year groups (E.g. Manchester United, Manchester City, Lancashire Cricket, MCR Active, Bike Right and many others).
At St. Francis we provide a wide range of extracurricular activities, before, during and after school. We provide: invite only clubs to reach targeted children, fun clubs for all age groups and clubs that run side by side with the school games competitions and the PE curriculum. Our break times and lunchtimes offer a variety of physical activity where the staff encourage the pupils to take part daily. Not only do these opportunities provide the children with physical activity they also enhance the pupils: confidence, self-belief, energy, passion, team work and determination. Additionally, the pupils have the opportunity to play the role of an official, which encourages: honesty, leadership and many social skills. A sports squad and group of health champions support physical activity throughout the school and provide the school with a pupil voice.
The pupils meet to discuss all aspects of PE, physical activity and sport and ensure they are all meeting the needs of the whole school. The pupils decided to increase the amount of activity around school and introduced ‘Friday Fitness’ wake and shake on a Friday morning which the pupils and staff fully engage in and thoroughly enjoy. They also take lead of the buddy system on KS1 playground to engage more pupils in physical activity.
The children at St. Francis thrive in competitive situations and have huge passion and love for the opportunities we provide. Due to the enthusiasm of the pupils we try to take part in every competition provided by the Manchester School Games, in some cases taking more than one team to the events! These opportunities provide a range of benefits for the pupils from: social, thinking, healthy and physical skills in addition to enhancing their learning even further. We also provide: intra competition throughout the PE curricular, opportunities for friendly games against local schools and we host an annual sports week which is a huge success each year.
Impact
At St. Francis we motivate children to participate and engage in fun filled PE, school sport and physical activity. We offer a wide range of learning, through PESSPA, to encourage the pupils to develop and expand their knowledge and understanding of a healthy, active lifestyle. We provide many opportunities for the pupils to leave the school with a vast amount of life long skills, socially, mentally and physically. The pupils at St. Francis build confidence, character and friendships through PESSPA which they can carry with them in all aspects of life.
Our sporting achievements so far (2021-22)
East Manchester Athletics champions
East Manchester Cross country champions
Manchester New Age Kurling champion
East Manchester tennis champion
PE and Sport in Action
We also offer Bike Right cycling lessons to our Year 5 children - during these sessions the children are taken out onto the roads around school and they learn how to cycle safely. The Bike Right team also visit the younger children to introduce them cycling with balance bikes.
Our Year 4 children go swimming every week along with a group of ten Year 3 children who have not been swimming before. We have gradually moved swimming down the school from Year 6 and are aiming for Year 2 to be the main swimming class in the next few years.
PE Curriculum
Our staff are just as enthusiastic about sport as the children. Here they are following an impromptu staff vs children rounders match after school!
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