PE
Physical Education (PE) at Mossgate Primary School is designed and delivered to ensure it enhances our children’s physical health, boosts their mental wellbeing, builds resilience and creates active habits for life. It also instils in our children the core values of creativity, aspirations, resilience and empathy which in turn contribute to wellbeing and achievement. Through our PE Curriuclum and its delivery, we feel PE at Mossgate makes a unique contribution to pupils’ wellbeing and is the one of the most powerful subject in terms of its impact on both physical and emotional health of our children.
Every opportunity is given to develop physical competence and well-being. We strive to deliver a high-quality physical education curriculum that inspires all pupils to succeed and excel in competitive sport and other physically demanding activities. We provide opportunities for pupils to become physically confident, focusing on the development of agility, balance and co-ordination, healthy competition and co-operative learning in a way which supports their health and fitness. Whilst also ensuring children learn and model the values needed to become well-rounded sportsmen or sportswomen.
PE Lessons:
Through our inclusive, engaging and challenging PE lessons, we aim to ensure that all pupils develop competence to excel in a broad range of physical activities, are physically active for sustained periods of time, engage in competitive sports and activities, lead healthy and active lives and learn and acquire the core values of our school. Therefore, all classes undertake PE twice a week fulfilling, whenever possible, the recommendation of 2 hours physical activity per week. If, due to the weather, classes are not able to participate in PE outside, they take part in a 10/15 minute High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) session due to its benefits from a health and fitness perspective, in developing working memory and cognitive control.
Mindfulness and Mossgate’s 15 Minutes to Fit:
Alongside the 2 hours PE in Key Stage 2, our children also take part in Mindfulness Sessions for 30 minutes each week. This is led by Natasha Butler and is designed to provide the children with strategies to help our pupils to reduce stress and anxiety, strengthen attention and focus, support social and emotional growth, and better resolve conflicts both inside and outside of the PE Curriculum.
During the school day, our children take part in 15 minutes of physical activity through using the school running track to complete the ‘Daily Mile’ or if adverse weather conditions, completing a 10 minute HIIT session. This is designed to improve the children’s fitness, health and concentration levels.
PE Enrichment:
Our PE Curriculum is designed to also allow children to experience new sports to ensure they: develop their ability in these sports whilst learning and fostering the values which these sports hold. Each year group has the opportunity to learn a new sport/physical activity (balance bikes, cycling proficiency, golf, judo, fencing and archery) each year, led by external providers. The sessions are designed in co-operation with our PE lead and the external providers to ensure they meet the key learning for PE and allow children to learn and acquire new skills and values aiding their physical and mental development.
Sports Day:
Recently we have remodelled our school sports day to ensure that all children have the opportunity to: showcase their physical ability; work as a team towards a collective goal; showcase the skills and values they have learnt through our PE curriculum; and compete against one another within an environment which is inclusive and fair.
Key Stage One Sports Day is during the morning and Key Stage Two is during the afternoon to allow the different stages of children’s development to be catered for through the design of the activities, whilst also ensuring children are as active as possible. There is a clear progression from Key Stage One to Key Stage 2 in relation to the skills needed to take part to ensure children are challenged.
Each team (Houses: Red, Green, Blue and Purple) is represented at Sports Day, which is split into two parts:
Part 1: The children rotate around 8 different challenging physical activities, in mixed teams, with the goal of trying to gain points for their team. The points are collected at the end of the Sports Day – the team with the most points is awarded the KS1/KS2 Sports Day trophy.
Part 2: The children are given the opportunity to take part in heats within their PE lessons, which then determines whether or not they will take part in the competitive events on Sports Day itself:
KS1: Throw for Distance, Standing Long Jump and 25m Sprint.
KS2: Kwik Cricket Ball Throw; 60m Sprint; Long Distance Run and Triple Jump
OAA:
OAA at Mossgate is provided through:
- Lessons (orienteering, team building, point-to-point and more)
- OAA days (Year 3 and Year 5 – climbing kayaking and caving)
- Residentials (Year 4 – Wastwater and year 6 – Lakeside)
Residentials at Mossgate Primary are designed in collaboration with external providers to allow staff to be involved in their design and delivery, ensuring they meet the specific needs and learning objectives of our pupils. This in turn allows teachers to reinforce and build on these experiences back in school. We work in partnership with Bay Leadership Academy, Lakeside, Wastwater YHA and Borwick Hall to provide Outdoor Adventurous Activity as part of our curriculum. Children have the opportunity to take part in two residentials during their time in KS2. Year 6 visit Lakeside for a two night residential and Year 4 visit Wastwater for two nights.
Our residentials are designed to provide children with the opportunity to allow them to:
1. See see different qualities in each other, which can impact on their interpersonal relationships, both on the residential and back in school.
2. Develop new relationships and learning opportunities away from home for an extended period of time, providing opportunities for them to be immersed in learning, in an informal setting.
3. Develop a sense of responsibility and maturity as pupils are responsible for themselves and others helping to promote self-reliance and teamwork.
4. Maintain the sense of community developed on the residential, through the memorability of the residential experience and the shared memories of pupils, to sustain the positive impacts seen on the residential.
5. Provide an opportunity to experience success in a range of practical and physical challenges impacting on confidence, self-belief and attitude to learning, both on the residential and back in the classroom.
Break, Lunchtime and After School:
In addition to physical education during curriculum time, we encourage children to be active at break and lunch times through playing: King Square, football, hockey, tag rugby, skittleball, hockey, running/cycling/scootering around our designated tracks and a multitude of multi-skill activities.
The staff at Mossgate work hard to offer a wide range of extra-curricular sports clubs offering a wealth of opporutntites for children to participate in a wide range of sporting activities. We also have a weekly ‘Mossgate’s Moving Monday’ club before school, which is accessible for all pupils throughout the school. By doing this, we hope to support all of our children to find a sport that they enjoy and encourage lifelong participation.
Competitive Sport:
We offer opportunities for our children to compete in sport and other activities that build character and help to embed values such as fairness and respect. In school, the children have the opportunity to take part in intra-school competitions, allowing them to exhibit and hone their skills within a range of sports.
In addition, we take part in lots of inter-school sporting competitions with other schools from Lancaster, Morecambe and the wider district. Events such as interschool athletics, hockey, netball, rounders, football and gymnastics competitions are regularly attended to provide children with the opportunity to demonstrate their sporting ability and sporting values at the highest possible level.
Mr Callum Thwaites (PE Leader & Deputy Headteacher)