“Do you know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God.” – Corinthians 6:19-20
Catholic Social Teaching
Within Physical Education, Catholic Social Teachings will be discussed within lessons and extra-curricular activities. These include;
The curriculum is broad and balanced allowing students to develop the knowledge and skills to be physically active and healthy in later life. Our curriculum promotes a love of physical activity and the confidence to participate. In addition, students will be able to evaluate their own health and fitness levels using data effectively and implement effective programs to further enhance their ability levels. The curriculum also promotes the academic side of the subject closely linking practical and theoretical concepts. Students will learn about worldwide sports, training practices and the global issues associated with these. They will be able to make reasoned arguments about important issues such as performance enhancement, gender stereotypes and use of the media to promote sport and confidently articulate their opinions and challenge their peers’ opinions using evidence to support their arguments. Students will be given an opportunity to work with their peers and will be encouraged to demonstrate coaching, officiating and captain qualities. Students will develop a knowledge and understanding of how to work with other students of varying levels of skill and ability. They will be guided to use leadership qualities when working as part of a team and respond to the strengths and weaknesses of those they are working with, with the intention of students taking these skills in to working life. Sportsmanship should be visible in all lessons with students abiding by rules being humble in victory and gracious in defeat. We attempt to increase student’s self-confidence and provide an inclusive learning environment where all students are able to make good progress, whilst feeling comfortable to make mistakes and build resilience. By listening to our student voice and most current national research we have selected sports for our curriculum we feel are relevant to the needs and desires of our students.
Sports and skills are re-visited in each year group to consolidate learning. The application of these skills to game play is challenged progressively by increasing the size of small sided games and developing into fully competitive games.
We Build on strategies and tactics, knowledge and understanding through the delivery of sports selected by student voice, staff expertise and facilities and resources available. In individual activities students are challenged to be creative and develop their body awareness. Skills increase in difficulty and routines become more challenging with more skills linked together.
Core PE: Our focus is fostering a love for long life participation and an appreciation of the benefits of physical activity on health and fitness. We do this through taking a recreational approach to lessons, offering a choice of activities that students select from. Students adopt different roles within lessons, such as, a leader, official, coach, captain. Students are encouraged to see that participation in physical activity can be achieved in a variety of ways. Students are encouraged to lead warm-up activities and run their own class competitions and tournaments increasing self confidence and leadership qualities needed in the world of work.
GCSE PE: & Btec Sport – To prepare our students thoroughly for all aspects of their assessment.
To offer opportunities throughout the course to inspire students to be the best they can be. Including a trip to Lilleshall National Sports Centre. To facilitate students learning, following schemes of learning, providing personalised guidance, feedback and support to enable students to fulfil their potential.
A Level: To prepare our A Level students thoroughly for all aspects of assessment.
Practical – To facilitate their practical progress by setting personal targets and liaising with parents to ensure practical video footage is high quality and meets specification requirements.
Coursework – Preparing students for their independent coursework by giving advice on selected sports and weaknesses to use. Setting a clearly structured programme so that students are able to meet deadlines. Offering students feedback to guide and improve their work.
Theory Exams Paper 1 & 2: Three teachers deliver their own specialist area. Physiology, Sports Psychology & socio-cultural aspects of sport. Each has its own scheme of learning and is adapted to suit the needs of the cohort each year. A focus on independent learning where teachers act as facilitators and students develop personalised learning styles.
Students are given the opportunity to experience competitive sport by representing their house team in regular house events once a term. All students have the opportunity to engage in our competitive sports programme and represent the school in a number of sports. Our extra-curricular programme consists of Rugby, Football, Gymnastics, Trampolining, Netball, Hockey, Basketball, Cricket, Rounder’s, Volleyball, Tennis & Athletics. Year 9, 10, 11 & 6th form students are able to participate in the Bronze, Silver & Gold Duke of Edinburgh Awards which promotes leadership & service, competition & physical endeavour and culture & creativity through the completion of different sections of the Award. Ski club at Chill Factore is offered to all students each term, leading into our annual whole school ski trip to Austria.
We offer a number of leadership opportunities with older students assisting at younger students clubs, leading coaching sessions, officiating matches and helping to run our district sports events. For example the Chester & District Indoor Athletics, Trampolining, Basketball, Football and Gymnastics.
External sports clubs run a broad programme of enrichment clubs for students on our Monday enrichment time.
We have excellent links with local sports clubs. We invite clubs in to trial our students and give new opportunities, for example the Grosvenor rowing club.
We have been invited to be part of the International school games and have visited France with our students to compete in the international competition.
Our GCSE PE students undertake a 6 week Rock climbing course at the Boardroom in Deeside.
Science– Theoretical links throughout Year 7,8& 9. For example: Teaching the Skeleton in Year 7 alongside science at the same time to help students reinforce and embed learning.
Drama – “Being a good audience” linking with our aesthetic performance sports of Trampolining / Gymnastics & Dance where students perform in front of others and respect is shown by the audience. At the start of the year links made between the subjects and throughout the sports.
Psychology – Memory models & Learning Theories at A Level. Taught at alongside each other at the same time, students make links between the subjects and consolidate knowledge.
Year 4/5 Days led by PE. Useful for assessing sporting ability and what sports have been covered at primary school.
Year 7 Summer School – useful for seeing the year group together and trialling a number of sports with them for likes and dislikes.
Baseline Year 7 Practical & Theory
Links with Primary school PE leads
Personal Information booklets on entry – including any sports clubs / they attend outside of school.
Members of the PE team assigned to feeder primary schools and will make contact to go in and teach a lesson throughout the academic year.
Reading –Text Book given to each student at GCSE &A Level. Current research articles given to students to enhance learning. Encouragement to look at websites and media newspaper reports on sporting events. At key stage 3 students are given a theory revision booklet alongside rules of the sports. Students read task cards in lessons and are given coaching cards with key teaching points to coach each other.
Writing–GCSE, Btec & A Level are given writing frames, connective words help sheets and Evaluative language prompts to help structure their longer questions. Essay writing is focus with clear links to the AO1 AO2 and AO3 objectives. Vocabulary is corrected along with punctuation and grammar. A real emphasis is placed on command words and the understanding of these in terms of requirements for the exam. Students are taught to apply their sporting knowledge through their writing. At key stage 3 students record scores and evaluate their performance, writing down their strengths and areas for improvement. We follow the whole school marking policy.
Communicating –Students work in pairs / groups in all lessons and are encouraged to communicate clearly with other students. Students are taught how to express their points of view and how to listen to other students’ ideas especially when set problem solving tasks. Students coach each other and effectively learn how to motivate their team mates. Teachers rotate the captains of teams to allow all students to have leadership opportunities. At GCSE &A Level students are taught to argue their opinions in debates, how to put a strong argument across and justify their points with evidence, this is a vital part of our new specification.
All students given a baseline line grade in the first 4 weeks of Year 7 – and are then set using this data.
In key Stage 3 we assess students at the end of each unit covered, giving them a GCSE 9-1 Grade. These assessment grades are sent to students on firefly and are visible to parents.
These assessments feed into our whole school tracking system.
GCSE, Btec & A Level students have an end of unit test which is graded. Detailed feedback is given so students correct errors and make progress.
Cross moderation takes place at the end of each unit for practical and theory between teachers to ensure all students are consistently graded.
Set weekly for GCSE & A Level students. Variety of tasks including research, work sheets, posters, mind maps, completing tables/charts and exam questions. Homework consolidates lesson knowledge and through repetition helps store key information in the long term memory.
Revision notes are set as homework for each topic area and are checked by the teacher to ensure students are building up independence in their learning.
Key stage 3 have theory revision guides that link to the sport and theory they are currently studying and are encouraged to practice their skills at our extra-curricular clubs.
