At Solent Infant School, our PE curriculum is designed to give every child the essential physical literacy in fundamental movement skills, as well as the emotional, social and thinking skills to succeed in maintaining a healthy, active life.

At the heart of our PE curriculum, we aim to develop our children’s fundamental movement skills through positive, successful and inspirational lessons. Our curriculum is fully inclusive and allows all pupils to access a broad range of opportunities to importantly extend their agility, balance and coordination, individually and with others. We know that PE is also essential in its contribution to a child’s emotional development and health. Physical Education at Solent Infant school will develop children to allow them to learn more about themselves and their bodies, the importance of healthy lifestyles, self-expression, decision making and social skills. We recognise how important children’s physical health and emotional well-being are and the relationship between these and academic achievement. Being physically active will enable children to thrive across all areas of the curriculum and increase their confidence to risk take and work collaboratively, cooperating and developing life-long values of teamwork, friendship and respect.

By the end of Year 2, children will have mastered the basic fundamental movements including running, jumping, throwing and catching, practised in both competitive and cooperative physical activities. Children will develop their balance, agility and co-ordination skills and will have engaged these skills in a range of increasingly challenging situations. Our children will participate in a number of team games, developing early tactics for attacking and developing, preparing them for the next part of their PE journey at Solent Junior School. Creatively, children will have the opportunity to perform dances using simple movement patterns and express themselves through this outlet.

Children are taught PE by both specialised PE coaches and their class teacher, where progression and depth of skills are clearly evident. Children develop their fundamental movement skills through impeccable planning, carefully adapted to meet the needs of individual learners We encourage children to be active throughout their PE lessons, exploring changes to their bodies and developing creative ways to move and express themselves. There are also planned opportunities for the children to perform, critique their own and others’ performances, as well as to model and be the expert where they excel.

During their time at Solent Infant School, children will have rich opportunities to compete against themselves, their class team, year group and children from other schools at planned events. Personal bests are emphasised, where we want our children to feel success and, in turn, have the confidence to pursue physical activities in extra-curricular times, developing our important school value of resilience. Throughout the school day, children also access a range of mindfulness outlets such as yoga, brain gym and breathing strategies to support their well-being and readiness for learning.