PE, Sport, Being Active & Well
Sport, being active and looking after our well-being doesn't start and finish with curriculum PE at St. Cuthbert's. We have a whole school and community culture of being active, from our curriculum focusing on outdoor learning, collaboration and real life problem solving to our intergenerational and family projects we are always active. Our PE curriculum follows the national curriculum and we use GetSet4PE which is a fantastic resource full of lessons plans, video demonstrations, ideas for assessment and a tracking system which allows us to record what are children are doing and how they are achieving. All our children access at least 2 hours of PE and physical activity each week and our curriculum has been developed to provide all children with:
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A high-quality PE curriculum inspires all children to succeed and excel in competitive sport and other physically-demanding activities.
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Opportunities for children to become physically confident in a way which supports their health and fitness.
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Opportunities to compete in sport and other activities build character and help to embed values such as fairness and respect.
The St. Cuthbert's Curriculum for PE aims to ensure that all children:
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develop competence to excel in a broad range of physical activities;
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are physically active for sustained periods of time;
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engage in competitive sports and activities;
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lead healthy, active lives.
Competitive sport provides many benefits for St. Cuthbert's children, including:
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giving our children the chance to use, apply, develop and improve learnt skills in match situations;
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giving our children the opportunity to play sports and interact with other children, forming social bonds and relationships;
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teaching our children about competition, teamwork, leadership and sportsmanship;
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giving our children the chance to learn to manage success and disappointment;
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giving our children the opportunity to build confidence and self-esteem, get exercise and have fun!
The well-being of our children, staff and wider community have always been central to what we do and focus on four main areas:
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Spiritual well-being.
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Physical well-being.
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Mental being.
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Emotional well-being.
These four areas of well-being run through everything we do and we have had classes of children and families move through St. Cuthbert's and onto secondary education aware of the importance of being well and what to do when we don't feel well. From our Early Years to year 6 our children understand the need to be physically active, to be able to self regulate, how to recognise their own mental health and the well-being of others and what to do when they feel they need support in any of these areas of their lives. At St. Cuthbert's our children use Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs to describe how they are feeling to help identify what they need to move up the pyramid of needs.
Our focus on outdoor learning helps us ensure our children are active when learning and that they work collaboratively, develop language and social skills as well as improving communication, motivation, physical skills, knowledge and understanding. It has also boosts children’s self-esteem, self-confidence, ability to work cooperatively and positive attitude to learning. Being active physically and mentally and learning collaboratively and outdoors isn’t just a nice to have: it’s a crucial and transformative part of childhood.
Our PE curriculum includes a big focus on children challenging themselves and taking part in activities they can continue away from school. Cycling is a big part of what we do at St. Cuthbert's and children begin their cycling journey with us on balance bikes in Nursery and Reception Class and continues throughout school culminating in weekly cycling lessons in years 4 and 5 when children cycle around our local area, travelling to sites linked to other areas of our curriculum. Where possible we cycle rather than booking a coach and the money saved on transport helps ensure we have top quality bikes and cycling equipment for our children and staff and CPD for our staff. We also have family bike rides when families come together to use the North Tyneside cycle paths on a morning bike rides together. Families are also involved in our cooking activities which include our vegetable bag project and our half termly whole school activity mornings which always have a focus on one of our areas of well-being.
Alongside curriculum PE, work with families and cycling all our children in year 3 take part in daily swimming lessons for at least four weeks of their school year, ensuring children can swim a minimum of 25m by the time they leave St. Cuthbert's. Children who struggle to achieve 25m in year 3 are given further opportunities to achieve this standard again in year 4.
Having opportunities to enjoy being active and to compete are always gratefully taken up at St. Cuthbert's and there is a very strong culture of children of all ages representing their school in as many events as possible. This includes boys and girls football across key stage 2, taking part in North Tyneside LA and North Tyneside Family of Catholic Schools sporting events athletics days, rugby, hockey, cross country, basketball, netball, tennis, multi skills, gymnastics, skipping, archery, street golf, orienteering, and any other event that is held. If there is a competition happening St. Cuthbert's are there- often on bikes!
Our approach to being physically and mentally healthy across our whole school involves many of our children being responsible for the supporting learning and play in their own class and other classes. Our Young Sport and Play Leaders have been trained to teach younger children how to play playground games and lead much of the play and break and lunchtimes. We also follow the Loose Parts Play philosophy which encourages imaginative play and is a large part of independent outdoor learning.
St. Cuthbert's is a very active school and in addition to the curriculum PE our children are taught, the other extras help create and maintain a culture where everyone is encouraged to challenge themselves, where everyone can achieve and where success are celebrated during our weekly assemblies, in newsletters and on both Twitter and Tapestry. In addition to everything that happens daily at St. Cuthbert's we also work with the scouts at Keilder in Northumberland to provide our year 5 and 6 children with a very exciting residential trip to Hawkhirst every year. These trips give our children even more opportunities to challenge themselves and support each other as they build rafts, fly on the zip wire, hike through the forests and much, much more. You can find out more about what we do at St. Cuthbert's by looking through the documents and links below.