PE Curriculum Statement
At Thornbury, Physical Education provides all children with positive experiences of physical activity through lesson time, healthy competition and extra-curricular clubs. Through physical education, we aim to develop well rounded children, who know how to make healthy choices and inspire them to have a lifelong, positive relationship with physical activity. Children will develop their communication skills, ability to work as a team, fundamental movement skills, creativity in dance and gymnastics and will have opportunities to represent our school in a variety of sports. We aim to expose children to a wide range of activities, hoping to find everyone’s niche, that they will pursue long term.
Curriculum delivery
All children will have two, one hour PE lessons per week. In Foundation, this looks a little different, where children have Meadow Monday and PE on a Friday. It is expected that, on both of your child’s PE days, they will wear their PE kit to school, for the entire day. Even if your child is unable to be physically active on their PE day, they should still wear their PE kit as they will be involved in the PE lesson in alternative ways. Should the PE day need to change for any reason, such as school photo day, you will receive a message on Arbor, from the school office. If your child attends a sports extra-curricular club which is not on their PE day, they will need to bring PE kit to change into for this club.
For 2024 - 2025, year group PE days are:
Foundation: Friday
Years 1 & 2: Monday and Friday
Years 3&4: Monday and Wednesday
Years 5&6: Tuesday and Wednesday
For PE Lessons, children will need:
Games, Athletics, Outdoor and Adventurous Activities:
In the winter:
- Long black or navy jogging bottoms, plain red t-shirt or red Thornbury PE top, red school jumper & black trainers.
In the summer:
- Black or white shorts, plain red t-shirt or red Thornbury PE top & black trainers.
*Note: Children should always have a warm, waterproof coat with them. *
Long hair must be tied back.
Gymnastics & Dance
Black or white PE shorts and plain red t-shirt or red Thornbury PE top. Children will be asked to remove their shoes and socks to minimise risk of slipping. If there is a medical reason as to why this cannot happen, please inform your child’s class teacher. If gymnastics and dance occur in the winter, children may wear their red school jumper and long black/navy bottoms to school, over their shorts.
Jewellery
In order to minimise potential risk to your child and other children, Thornbury Primary School have a no jewellery policy in PE, in line with the recommendations from the Association for Physical Education, School Sport and Physical Activity (AfPE.2020).
If you are going to get your child’s ears pierced, please do so at the beginning of the summer holidays so that healing time will not impact on their learning in PE.
If children are unable to remove their own earrings, we ask that parents do this before school arrival.
The expectation is that all earrings are removed before PE lessons. If this is not possible, taping of the ears is at the parents’ discretion. This needs to be done either at home, before school arrival, or the children can bring medical tape or plasters to school and apply this over their earrings before the PE lesson. Adults will not be able to help with this. Should this not be viable, children will take an inactive role in the PE lesson, such as development of tactics, scoring or umpiring. All other jewellery, including watches, fitness trackers and any other accessories, need to be removed.
School Games Platinum Mark Award
We are delighted to announce that we, Thornbury Primary School, have achieved School Games Platinum Mark Award!
The School Games Mark is a Government-led award scheme launched in 2012, facilitated by the Youth Sport Trust to reward schools for their commitment to the development of competition across their school and into the community, and we are delighted to have been recognised for our success.
With many young people competing in local inter-school competitions this year, we are extremely proud of our pupils for their dedication to all aspects of school sport, those young volunteers, leaders and officials who made our competitions possible.
As part of our application who asked to fulfil criteria in the areas of participation, competition, workforce and clubs, we are pleased that the hard work of everyone at our school has been rewarded this year.
A special thanks to:
- Plymouth School Sports Partnership
- Patriots Basketball
- Plymouth Argyle Community Trust
- Nicola Brailsford - Miss Bee's Martial Arts Academy
- Exim Dance
We look forward to applying once again in 2025!
Plymouth School Sports Partnership
Our PE Specialist Teacher, works as part of the team for the PSSP and organises various sports events and festivals for the children in our family schools. To access a full calendar of events, please follow the hyperlink to the PSSP website http://www.plymouthssp.co.uk/content/sen-competitions You can also read write ups of recent events that we have attended in the ‘news’ section.
School Games
Thornbury are also part of the School Games network and as such are part of a national project that aims to get more young people participating and engaged in sports and competition. For more information about the School Games please visit their website. As part of our sports programme the PSSP run School Games events at regular intervals in the academic year to enable our young people to engage in various level of completion. For upcoming events or to read some of our blogs, please visit www.yourschoolgames.com and search for Thornbury Primary school.
