Curriculum

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Curriculum

Curriculum Intent

Our intent is to mold our students to have a passion for and an understanding of the benefits of, lifelong engagement in physical activity. Our curriculum is designed to enable students to develop physically, mentally, socially and emotionally by offering a breadth of activities; underpinned by key knowledge learning and use of PE specific vocabulary.

We offer the students a wide range of activities in-line with the national curriculum and to nourish the students’ cultural capital, we go beyond this by offering students broader lesson activities (including Indoor Climbing (Y11) and Sport Education (Y9)) and extra-curricular opportunities (including trips to Wimbledon, Vitality Netball and a Sports Tour to Italy).

We ensure that the breadth of experience is not at a detriment to students improving their skills and tactical awareness. Our curriculum has been shaped so that students delve deeper in to some activity areas, which are extended blocks of work. This allows students to work hard to gain a real range and quality of transferrable Core and Advanced skills as well as Decision Making and Tactical Awareness attributes. The deeper principles and skills learned will underpin many of the other activities experienced, whilst also helping to prepare students for the difficult practical content of examination PE.

Our curriculum is designed in-line with the National Curriculum aims to ensure our students

• 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, active lives.

Another defining characteristic of our intent is to motivate students to be kind through the ‘Sports Person of the Class/Week’ incentive. This promotes good sportsmanship, fair play and respect in lessons, which is then reflected in students’ attitudes and conduct in competitive sport, outside of the classroom.

Extra-Curricular sport is a key part of our identity. This aims to offer students a further breadth of participation and competition in traditional team sports and alternative activities. This is enhanced by our use of strong school-club links; further supporting our intent to encourage students to have a passion for and understanding of the benefits of, lifelong engagement in physical activity.

Curriculum Implementation

All students have 2 x 50 minute lessons of core PE each week, from Year 7-11. All students follow 5 year progressive schemes of work allowing a seamless transition through KS3, KS4 and KS5 so that each key stage builds upon the knowledge and skills developed in both core PE and examination PE lessons. In-line with the National curriculum, through Key Stages 3 and 4, our objectives are that pupils learn how to

• use a range of tactics and strategies to overcome opponents in direct competition through team and individual games (for example, cricket, football, netball, rounders, rugby and handball)
• develop their technique and improve their performance in other competitive sports (for example, in athletics and gymnastics)
• perform dances using advanced dance techniques within a range of dance styles and forms (including Bollywood, STOMP!, Contemporary and Lyrical)
• take part in outdoor and adventurous activities which present intellectual and physical challenges and be encouraged to work in a team, building on trust and developing skills to solve problems, either individually or as a group (through an Orienteering unit in Year 8)
• analyse and evaluate their performances compared to previous ones and demonstrate improvement to achieve their personal best
• take part in competitive sports and activities outside school through community links (present in our enrichment programme) or sports clubs, which we run both inside of school (including Netball, Football, Handball, Cross Country, Athletics, Rounders, Dance and Cricket) and recommend to students outside of school.

The context of our programme of study within our school is that it takes the utmost advantage of our reasonable outdoor and limited indoor provision by ensuring that year-on-year, students build-on skills acquired in previous year’s activities but also gain an insight in to new activities, every year. As we don’t have a Sports Hall facility, we are not able to offer activities such as Badminton until students are in Year 11, where we transport students to the excellent facilities at the University of Nottingham.

We strive for the most breadth possible, using the facilities at our disposal. The planned sequence of each activity considers the seasons and associated weather conditions and tries to ensure that we have minimal disruption to our activities as a result of poor weather. At GCSE, we have to use external sports facilities to support our schedule to ensure that students are able to achieve the best possible practical grades (worth 30% of their final grades). This includes the Robin Hood Gymnastics Facility (Sherwood), where we Trampoline.

Most of our sport schemes of work are informed by the OCR GCSE PE specification and assessment criteria, so that students are familiar with relevant vocabulary, alongside their lessons. The rest (which do not have correlating OCR assessment criteria) are developed with the intention of expanding the breadth of experience for students, to enable them to find some aspect of physical activity/sport in which they gain an interest to participate in, for the rest of their lives.

GCSE PE

We have a 2 year Key Stage 4 GCSE PE curriculum, outlined below

Year 10	J587/1 Physical Factors Affecting Performance unit (30% of the final grade) is studied in 2 x 50 minute lessons, each week J587/3 NEA practical sports (30% of the final grade) is studied in 1 x 50 minute lesson, each week Part of the J587/3 NEA AEP Coursework (10% of final grade) is completed when relevant content is studied
Year 11	J587/2 Socio-Cultural Issues and Sports Psychology unit (30% of the final grade) is studied in 2 x 50 minute lessons, each week J587/3 NEA practical sports (30% of the final grade) is studied in 1 x 50 minute lesson, each week Part of the J587/3 NEA AEP Coursework (10% of final grade) is further completed when the remaining relevant content is studied

A Level PE

We have a standard length 2 year A Level PE curriculum

To reflect the weightings of each unit’s assessment, the breakdown of lessons is

Year 12

2 x 50 minute lessons of Component 01: Physiological factors affecting performance (30% of final grade) 1 x 50 minute lessons of Component 02: Psychological factors affecting performance (20% of final grade) 2 x 50 minute lessons of Component 03: Socio-cultural issues in physical activity and sport (20% of final grade)

Year 13

2 x 50 minute lessons of Component 01: Physiological factors affecting performance (30% of final grade) 1 x 50 minute lesson of Component 02: Psychological factors affecting performance (20% of final grade) 1 x 50 minute lesson of Component 03: Socio-cultural issues in physical activity and sport (20% of final grade) 1 x 50 minute lessons of Component 04: Performance in physical education (NEA) (30% of final grade)

The full Core PE and Examination PE long term content overviews are available by clicking the corresponding links.