At St. Monica's, it is our vision that all children receive a broad range of opportunities and experiences of high-quality physical education, sports and physical activity led by highly-skilled and enthusiastic staff; where every child feels confident and excited to participate in physical activity and inspired to achieve success in sports, leading to lifelong enjoyment, participation and maintenance of healthy, active lifestyles. 

Intent - 

• That all children can achieve the aims of the national curriculum through a broad, balanced and progressive curriculum.  
• A commitment from staff to develop children across different domains - physically, cognitively, socially, and emotionally.

 Vision and aims: Therefore at St Monica’s, we want the teaching of Physical Education to:

• Promote a healthy and fulfilling lifestyle by developing self-motivation to take part in physical activity both inside and outside of school.
• Raise awareness of issues regarding health related fitness.
• Develop a sense of fair play and sportsmanship. 
• Help raise children’s self-esteem and confidence. 
• Develop social skills (co-operating in groups, playing fairly to rules, mixing with children from other schools).
• Promote an understanding of safe practice and develop a sense of responsibility towards their own and other’s safety and wellbeing.
• Encourage an enjoyment and positive attitude to the subject in school.
• Facilitate children’s development of skills and knowledge and apply it in a range of traditional and ‘new’ sports.

PE at St. Monica's

As outlined in our PE subject policy, we aim to provide a safe and stimulating PE curriculum. In addition to this, children are given the opportunity to develop their physical, social, emotional and intellectual skills in a number of ways: 

Play Leaders -   This year children from years 2, 4 and 6 have been trained as play leaders by our school games organiser. The children were taught ways to encourage play and involvement and to help facilitate the 'Personal challenges' which involves children completing various sports skills during break and lunchtimes.

Extra-curricular clubs - We have a range of after-school and lunchtime sports club opportunities available, including: football, netball, cross country, archery, basketball, cricket and multi-skills. These clubs feed in to some of our school sports teams such as football and netball, both being very popular and successful in inter-school competitions in recent years. Our Cross Country team trains on a regular basis to prepare for events at Longford Park and John Leigh Park. 

Health Champions -There are 4 children trained as 'Health Champions' and they are our school ambassadors for healthy living. They help to educate the other children and promote the importance of healthy eating, looking after our mental health, sleep and exercise.

School Sports Leaders - Our 'Sports Leaders' worked hard last academic year to gather children's ideas of the things that we can do to improve and enhance our sports and PE across the school.  They will continue their roles this year and be taking part in a series of tasks throughout the year. 

Trafford School Sports Partnership (TSSP) - We are an active member of the TSSP network; allowing staff to have access to up-to-date professional development and opportunities to enter 'School Games' competitions, competing in a wide range of sporting activities against teams from across Trafford. We were very pleased to have achieved gold level accreditation in the School Games mark which further-demonstrates our commitment to providing our children with a range of opportunities to participate in competitive sport.  

Trips - Children have had the opportunity to visit local sports facilities in recent years, including the Manchester Thunder Netball, City Football Academy and the Etihad Stadium, Flixton golf club, Flixton girls school and Wellacre academy as well as Emirates Old Trafford.  Over the last few years, we have worked with 'Lancashire Cricket Foundation' who have worked with various classes as part of our PE lessons and after school club provision. 

Outdoor and Adventurous Activity (OAA) - In addition to the the OAA units covered throughout Key stage 2 children have the opportunity, on their residential to Robinwood in Year 6, to experience a range of adventurous tasks that encourages them to take risks and challenge themselves; helping them to further-enhance their skills of collaboration, decision-making and problem-solving. 

Personal Best - Competitive PE at our school often revolves around competition with one's self to continually improve personally. We also encourage children to demonstrate the 'School Games' values of Passion, Self-Belief, Respect, Honesty, Determination and Teamwork and these are key indicators of what successful PE will foster. 

Early Years - One of the cornerstones of learning in the Early Years is physical development and its importance in unlocking many other fundamental aspects of development. Children use a wide range of equipment to develop both fine and gross motor skills and the ability to move and handle equipment with increasing confidence. 

Online Programmes - Teachers use 'Go-Noodle' and '5-a-day' to support children with their daily physical activity goals. These online programmes lead children through a range of short 'dance routines' to encourage active learning.  Throughout the school we use Primary PE Passport to plan children's learning in PE, this is fantastic resource to support high-quality PE and the progressive development of skills.

Swimming - Children in Upper-Key Stage 2 are taught by qualified coaches across a term so that they are confident and proficient swimmers by the end of Key Stage Two, in accordance with the requirements of the National Curriculum.