Intent
The PE curriculum at Larwood aims to provide all our children with high-quality physical education to enable and inspire them to build confidence and excel in their individual ability and achieve their potential. We provide opportunities for children to become physically confident within a varied curriculum, allowing them to strive in competitive sports, build character, and help to embed values such as fairness and respect. We believe there is a sport/activity that every child can enjoy and participate in. Therefore, we endeavour to give all children a variety of experiences throughout the year across PE lessons, after- school clubs, and external coaching.
Implementation
At Larwood School, all children from Year 1 to Year 6 are taught PE regularly by a sports coach. Our curriculum follows National Curriculum guidelines and includes a wide range of activities to challenge pupils and help them progress
Enrichment and Support:
- We take part in local sports events such as rugby, cricket, and boat races.
- An Active Start intervention is offered to pupils who need to release energy before lessons – especially helpful for those with ADHD or long taxi journeys.
Key Stage 1:
- Pupils develop key movement skills like running, jumping, throwing, and catching.
- They improve balance, agility, and coordination – individually and in groups.
- Children take part in both competitive and cooperative games, learning basic tactics and simple dance routines.
Key Stage 2:
- Pupils build on their skills, combining movements into sequences and playing a wider range of sports such as football, netball, rounders, and tennis.
- They learn to work as a team, evaluate their own progress, and aim for personal bests.
- PE includes activities that build flexibility, strength, control, and coordination through sports, dance, gymnastics, athletics, and outdoor challenges.
Space Hub Pupils:
- PE is adapted to suit individual needs, with a focus on gross motor skills, concentration, teamwork, and calming activities like yoga, alongside traditional games.
- Through PE, we aim to help every child stay active, enjoy movement, and grow in confidence and skill.
Swimming
Once children reach Year 6, they will participate in a term of swimming lessons led by qualified teaching staff at Stevenage Leisure Ltd swimming pool in Stevenage, supported by the PE teacher who is a qualified swim instructor and key members of their teaching team.
Impact
Our curriculum provides children with 1.5 hours of stimulating activity per week, which has an advantageous impact on their well-being. This is topped up with 1:1 or small group movement breaks such as Active Start, Brain Gym, and Movement breaks. Within our lessons, children are taught about self-discipline and that to be successful you need to take ownership and responsibility of their own health and fitness. Our impact is therefore to motivate children to utilise these underpinning skills in an independent and effective way in order to live happy and healthy lives.
In all classes, children have a wide range of physical ability. Whilst recognising this fact, we provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child and in doing so raise pupil’s health and fitness levels, improve skills, and develop pupil’s resilience, teamwork and perseverance which fit in with several of our Personal Development targets for each pupil.
The use of assessment, questionnaires, and surveys (pupils and staff) and by talking to children, the quality of lessons and confidence in the teaching of PE improves and as a result the level of enjoyment and positive outcomes increases.
We are fortunate enough to have extensive playgrounds, a large hall, use of Fairlands Valley Lakes, Gosling Ski slopes and Hampson Park. There is a wide variety of equipment for different sports, that can be used during lessons, playtime, and lunchtime.
As a school we are making full use of the Sport Premium money that the government has provided us, to better the physical learning experiences of all children. We are committed to using this resource in developing high quality PE lessons, alongside greater opportunities for sporting competitions for all our young people.
