Physical Education

Our ethos of "Fit 4 Life" aims to encourage all students to develop a love of exercise and learning in Physical Education, so that they become Fit 4 Life through the Core PE provision. Students are encouraged to think of their PE experiences in four strands: Performance (including skills, techniques and analysis of performance); Physical (including fitness and resilience, as well as level of contribution); Social (reflecting teamwork, leadership and sportsmanship) and Sports Science (incorporating Anatomy, Training Principles and Healthy Lifestyles).

During Key Stage 4, students have the opportunity to pursue an examination course via one of two pathways - the GCSE Physical Education course or the more vocational-focussed NCFE Health and Fitness course.

As our understanding and experience of using technology grow, we aim to engage learners in a wide range of activities to enhance their understanding of sporting concepts, healthy lifestyles and analysis of performance. The mobility and ease of access of iPad has hugely benefitted the delivery and engagement of students in their PE lessons, and has provided a more collaborative and dynamic learning experience for all, redefining their learning through innovative use of technology in lessons. The students regularly use iPad for self and peer assessment through video analysis and photography, to then use features such as "markup" to assess progress. In activities with a high level of technical or aesthetic competency, iPad has enabled students to engage more deeply in their learning through the use of visual recordings, Mark Up and reflection of performance.

All students complete "Gold Logs" for each activity on their iPads, allowing them to not only access key learning resources for concepts taught and, indeed, each lesson, to reflect on their own progress in a live and consistent manner. Part of this process of reflection and evaluation involves completing quizzes at regular intervals to improve their mastery and recall of key PE principles in a media rich manner.

Combining iPad with the accessibility of Apple TV has meant teachers have been able to highlight good practice on a large scale, and even carry out group analyses of performances in activities such as trampolining. In addition, the scope to introduce more advanced Sports Science principles has meant that exposure to concepts and content has accelerated their progress through Key Stage 4, in particular when entering one of the two examination pathways on offer.

Part of the ethos across the Prospect Trust is mastery, and through the use of a wide range of applications, the recall of key content is relentlessly embedded in both courses. Apps used to encourage and motivate the students to learn these key concepts include Forms, Quizlet, Kahoot and WordWall, introducing a regular element of competition in lessons, as well as the opportunity to work both collaboratively and independently towards mastery. This has deepened the understanding of fundamental Sport Science principles and accelerated the progress learners have made. The use of regular, online quizzing has made the process of retrieval, assessment and DIRT more efficient, clearer and more personalised for students, meaning that more time is spent on developing a deeper understanding of the concepts applied to sporting contexts.

The environment in the Physical Education department has enabled us to respond to changing times in education, to enable innovative learning and teaching opportunities, including revolutionising the marking and feedback process through the use of voice notes, such as Mote within Google Classroom, comment banks and the introduction of rubrics to help both student understanding of demands but also making the feedback process more efficient and meaningful.