As an external provider of PE services, I am often asked to work to the beat of another persons drum. By that I mean I am often asked to teach a subject or topic that I haven’t chosen myself. Most commonly this is because any school I go into already has a long term PE plan in place. This outlines the topics that each class will be learning within PE across the whole academic year.
I’d love to qualify that statement by saying that more often than not, these long term PE plans are really well thought through and put together. Just every so often, however, there is a hiccup. Sometimes it’s a slight oversight, sometimes it’s a complicated issue to work around. Below, are some key factors that will aid you in creating a long term PE plan that really works for your school.
1. The season and subsequent weather conditions
This will have your coaches or teachers smiling for joy. It’s really beneficial for you to envisage the type of activity or sport that you have planned for a certain year group or class. Do you picture that being done inside or outside? What equipment do you plan on using? Is this activity or sport particularly physically demanding?
There are lots of examples, but several that jump to mind. I recently taught in a school where the long term PE plan had Tennis as a topic for the 2nd half of the Autumn term with a Year 4 class. October, November & December. The decision to make was use the limited-space hall or go outside. Inside would severely restrict the amount of participation at any time in the lesson, Outside, the equipment getting wet couldn’t be avoided. Whether I used softer foam balls or tennis balls, they were going to get wet. Even if it wasn’t directly raining at the time of the lesson, the balls would bounce on the wet floor and pick up water and mud. This then made my children’s hands wet and cold. I’m sure in hindsight, that sport would’ve been moved to another term.
2. Space available
This is important because certain sports require more space per child to learn. If your school has particularly limited spaces indoors or outdoors it may be wise to choose certain activities that are appropriate for that space.
I am going to use the same example of Tennis with that Year 4 class. As KS2 children, they are attempting to learn different types of shots as part of their scheme of work and ultimately looking to participate in rallies and play in matches. So ideally, you would have a small court between a maximum of 6 children. So you may need the space for around 5 small courts. Of course, there are many, many practices you could use to teach certain skills within Tennis that could be done in a small area. But at some point you must trade off teaching technical skills with realism of the game, thus using a bigger area.
3. Equipment
Of course, every school wants to create a broader experience of a range of sports and activities to all pupils, as it is one of the key indicators OFSTED will assess PE by within your school. But, the realist in all of us must ask, ‘have we got the necessary equipment to facilitate this as a curriculum topic?’
Your school may have a multi-use games area, but will it’s two fixed-place basketball hoops provide the necessary flexibility for a shooting practice, especially as they are often set too high from the floor for many year groups to achieve sustained success!
The point here is to decide whether or not the activity is viable as a curriculum topic. If you decide it may not be, that’s fine. You can still satisfy that OFSTED key indicator by introducing something as a breakfast, lunch or after school club!
4. Other school events
Christmas time is one of my favourite times of the year in schools, children making decorations, tree up in the school hall, nativity rehearsals. However, this could be somewhat unhelpful for the teacher who has to teach a Year 6 class gymnastics in a corner of the hall to avoid the stage and tree put up in the hall.
One school I have recently worked in have had a Halloween party and a Fireworks display in school, and the preparations affected my ability to teach a group on the school playground. Whilst some events or clashes are unavoidable, a cursory glance at the school calendar might just help you rearrange when or where a class do their lessons to provide the most benefit to those children.
5. Is the activity age appropriate?
There are some sports that are better suited to certain age groups, that’s the short and simple nature of this one. To give it some more depth, some activities are fairly simple to pick up. Target throwing, for example, is a skill that almost all primary school age groups can do. Ultimately, the difficulty of the challenge will need to be adapted, but all children in the school will be able to throw at a target. Tri-golf, on the other hand is a sport that requires a high level of hand-eye co-ordination, patience and the ability to identify and self-correct technical factors in a child’s skill set. That can be terribly difficult for somebody that isn’t a PE specialist to teach.
A school I visited once had a sport in place for each term within their long term PE plan for their Reception class. The point I had to make to the schools PE coordinator was that whilst we can teach the skills that are required for a given sport to children in KS1, generally we don’t teach the sport itself, because children at that age group need to develop these skills much further before being burdened by the rules and regulations of a sports. For example, some Year 2 children may appear to be able to bounce the ball whilst moving, but if you ask them to dribble a basketball whilst thinking about whether they are ‘double-dribbling’ or ‘travelling’, their technique may suffer as a consequence.
I hope you find this article insightful, perhaps it might highlight the one thing you forgot to examine before finalising the long term PE plan in your school!
