Our PE Curriculum
Article 6: Every child has the right to life. Governments must do all they can to make sure children survive.
Article 23: A child with a disability has the right to live a full decent life and play an active part in the community. Governments must do all they can to provide support for disabled children.
Article 24: Every child has the right to good health.
Our goal is for our children to become physically active. Physically active pupils must have:
- The ability to acquire new knowledge and skills exceptionally well and develop an in-depth understanding of PE.
- The willingness to practice skills in a wide range of different activities and situations, alone, in small groups and in teams and to apply these skills in the chosen activities to achieve exceptionally high levels of performance.
- High levels of physical fitness.
- The ability to remain physically active for sustained periods of time and an understanding of the importance of this in promoting long-term health and well-being.
- The ability to take the initiative and become excellent young leaders, organising and officiating, and evaluating what needs to be done to improve, and motivating and instilling excellent sporting attitudes in others.
- Exceptional levels of originality, imagination and creativity in their techniques, tactics and choreography, knowledge of how to improve their own and others’ performance and the ability to work independently for extended periods of time without the need of guidance or support.
- A keen interest in PE. A willingness to participate eagerly in every lesson, highly positive attitudes and the ability to make informed choices about engaging fully in extra-curricular sport.
- The ability to swim at least 25 metres before the end of KS2 and knowledge of how to remain safe in and around water.
Early Years - Nursery & Reception Curriculum
Early Years Foundation Stage - what does Physical Education look like in the Early Years?
In the Early Years Foundation Stage, Physical Education (PE) forms part of the learning children acquire under the ‘Knowledge and Understanding of the World' branch of the Foundation Stage curriculum.
In the Early Years Foundation Stage, the aim of PE is to improve skills of coordination, control, manipulation and movement, much of it taking place through free or lightly structured activity.
Children develop large motor skills through jumping, hopping, skipping, climbing and running, and also through playing with pedal and push-and-pull toys. Children participate freely in these kinds of activities both indoors and outdoors.
Fine motor skills are acquired by filling a container with sand, doing a puzzle or stringing beads. Children need these skills to do up buttons or laces and to hold a pen or pencil to write correctly. For example, children who practise and succeed in filling containers in the water tray will handle drinks more successfully and have the confidence to, for example, pour out their own drinks.
There are some language objectives in PE lessons, too. Teachers will introduce words for negotiation and co-operation, such as ‘share’, ‘wait’, ‘take turns’, ‘before‘ and ‘after’.
Here are some examples of what teachers may do in PE lessons in the Early Years:
- The children carry out the actions of the story 'Going on a Bear Hunt'. They interpret different ways of moving, carefully avoiding bumping into each other.
- The class pretend to be planes. They put their arms out while moving around the room making engine noises. After several minutes they lie down on the floor to mimic a plane landing.
- Using an obstacle course created by the teacher, the children follow one another to swing along the overhead ladder hand over hand, crawl through the tunnel, hop along the bench and roll sideways across the mat.
The document below outlines in more detail the specific Physical Education objectives within the Early Years curriculum, what it looks like in practice, and demonstrates the links between the Early Years and the Physical Education curriculum. It also highlights key vocabulary taught within our Early Years and at Key Stage 1.
PE - Early Years to Key Stage 1 Curriculum Links.
Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 Curriculum
Fundamental Foundations
We believe that for children to secure greater depth, it is important that they first have solid fundamental foundations. Fundamental foundations should not be rushed and so the notion of ‘rapid progress’ must be dismissed. Instead the goal of repetition should be seen as both useful and necessary. This is why you will see us returning regularly to PE knowledge, skills and concepts.
Cognitive Domains - Degrees of Understanding
We refer to three degrees of understanding and thinking ‘Basic’, ‘Advancing’ and ‘Deep’. BASIC – Low level cognitive demand. Involves acquisition of fundamental foundations. ADVANCING – Higher level cognitive demands beyond recall. Requires application involving some degree of decision making in how to apply fundamental foundations. DEEP – Cognitive demand involves non-standard, non-routine, inter-connected, multi-step thinking in problems with more than one possible solution. Requires reasoning and justification for the inventive application of fundamental foundations.Time Scales for Progression Through the Cognitive Domains
Milestone 1 – Y1 & Y2
Milestone 2 – Y3 & Y4
Milestone 3 – Y5 & Y6
Each milestone should be seen as containing two phases. In the first phase, pupils should repeat the content a sufficient number of times to secure fundamental foundations; in the second phase, they should apply the foundations in order to reach the ‘expected’ standard. If they reach this before the end of the second phase, they should move on to tasks that will secure greater depth. Thus, progress through the cognitive domains take two years.
It is expected that by the end of Year 1, pupils should be able to complete the BASIC tasks to secure fundamental foundations and by the end of Year 2, the ADVANCING tasks. It is also reasonable that a number of children may move on to the DEEP activities if they secure an early understanding of advancing.
As part of our progression model we use a different pedagogical style in each of the cognitive domains of basic, advancing and deep. This is based on the research of Sweller, KIrschner and Rosenshine who argue to direct instruction in the early stage of learning and discovery based appropriate later.
Milestone 1 Y1 & Y2 |
Milestone 2 Y3 & Y4 |
Milestone 3 Y5 & Y6 |
||||||
Beginning Y1 |
Advancing Y2 |
Deep Y2 |
Beginning Y3 |
Advancing Y4 |
Deep Y4 |
Beginning Y5 |
Advancing Y6 |
Deep Y6 |
Page 144 of the Primary National Curriculum 2014 states:
‘While it is important that pupils make progress, it is also vitally important that they develop secure understanding of each key block of knowledge and concepts in order to progress to the next stage. Insecure, superficial understanding will not allow genuine progress: pupils may struggle at key points of transition (such as between primary and secondary school), build up serious misconceptions, and/or have significant difficulties in understanding higher-order content.’
We believe that it is therefore extremely important to secure the fundamental foundations before trying to secure greater depth.
Curriculum Breadth, Depth & Progression Principles
We have carefully planned our curriculum to ensure progression as well as breadth and depth. These are the principles we have adhered to:
- We revisit the same micro-topics in both years of a milestone so that pupils have a chance to connect topics together (intra-curriculum links)
- Threshold concepts are returned to regularly within and through all the milestones
- Planning ensures that we move from basic to advancing, with some children achieving deeper learning over the two years within a milestone
Building a Physical Education Schema at Globe
Our pupils will form a Physical Education schema* by:
- using concepts as the basis for schema. We call these threshold concepts; these are the big ideas which form the basis for the subject schema. In PE the threshold concept is: Develop practical skills in order to participate, compete and lead a healthy lifestyle
- strengthening the schema with knowledge. The knowledge comes from our topics. Within each topic are knowledge categories, the facets of each threshold concept that helps to strengthen the schema. The PE knowledge categories are: movement, healthy lifestyle, tactics and strategy, leadership and personal and social.
- Further deepening connections through tasks. This is what is developed though our planning.
*Schema – Schema theory states that all knowledge is organised into units. A schema is, therefore is a conceptual system for understanding knowledge. A subject schema is a way of organising knowledge in a meaningful way; it is an appreciation of how facts are connected and they ways in which they are connected. A schema is distinct from information, which is just isolated facts that have no organisational basis or links.
Threshold Concepts – The Big Ideas
The one Big Idea, the one threshold concept in PE is to :
Develop practical skills in order to participate, compete and lead a healthy lifestyle
Each threshold concept has its own facets of knowledge which help to strengthen the schema. This knowledge can be put into categories. Here are the knowledge categories:
- Movement
- Tactics and strategy
- Personal and social
- Leadership
- Healthy lifestyle
Curriculum Breadth Maps (topics) - IntentMilestone 1 Curriculum Map
This link will take you to the the Globe Curriculum page where you will find the curriculum map for each year. These give an overview of what is taught in subject area, our curriculum intent.
How we Implement our PE Curriculum
PE is taught weekly for 60 minutes. We do not block our subjects as we want children to return regularly to the subject knowledge and concepts in order that they are regularly retrieving the tuaght knowledge and concepts, embedding these in their long term memory. This enables them to make progress - know more and remember more.
Physical Development in the Early Years
Creative Dance Curriuclum
At present we have a specialist dance teacher who teaches dance from Y1 to Y6 with classes rotating each half term. Below you will find details of our creative dance curriculum.
Year 5-7 Creative Dance Curriculum
Year 7-11 Creative Dance Curriculum
Sporting Success
Click here to have a look at some of our sporting successes.
Beyond the National Curriculum - Cultural Capital Experiences
Cultural capital is the essential knowledge that children need to prepare them for their future success. We want to ensure that children at Globe have a wide and varied range of experiences as they progress through our school. We want them to know about their world; to build a schema of knowledge and to do this through first hand experiences. We intend to provide our children with opportunities to develop not just their knowledge but their interests and talents. Our aim is to prepare them for a successful future.
Our school is in an area of high socio-economic deprivation. We are focused on addressing this disadvantage. Our curriculum is the main provider of cultural capital however there are other aspects of school life which provide essential cultural capital and should not be overlooked. We have planned the cultural provision that goes beyond the curriculum and this plan can be found below. This plan is to capture, illustrate and to strategically plan for the breadth and range of cultural capital experiences we will provide for our children as they move through the school. We are not leaving such an essential element of our school’s provision to chance or individual teacher interest. When a child leaves Globe in Year 6, we will be certain of what they have learnt and experienced and know that they will be prepared for the next step in their learning and personal development.
Globe's Whole School Cultural Capital, Trips and Experiences Plan
Curriculum and Expectation Booklets for Parents
These booklets give an overview of our Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 curriculum. They explain what is taught in each subject area as well as outlining some of the expectations we have for children. Parents are given these booklets at the start of each year and they are sent electronically with each term's newsletter.
2024/2025 Curriculum Booklets (Cycle 1)
Year 1 Curriculum and Expectations Booklet for Parents
Year 2 Curriculum and Expectations Booklet for Parents
Year 3 Curriculum and Expectations Booklet for Parents
Year 4 Curriculum and Expectations Booklet for Parents
Year 5 Curriculum and Expectations Booklet for Parents
Year 6 Curriculum and Expectations Booklet for Parents
2025/2025 Curriculum Booklets (Cycle 2)
Year 1 Curriculum and Expectations Booklet for Parents
Year 2 Curriculum and Expectations Booklet for Parents
Year 3 Curriculum and Expectations Booklet for Parents
Year 4 Curriculum and Expectations Booklet for Parents