“Sport teaches you character, it teaches you to play by the rules, it teaches you to know what it feels like to win and lose – it teaches you about life.”

– Billie Jean King

 

At Silsden, our aim is to nurture and develop a love of physical activity in ALL of our children. We believe in creating good habits around sport and physical activity that will stay with our pupils for the rest of their lives.

We know that being active has an abundance of benefits, not only physical but also mental, and our hope is that all of our children leave us with a love of and confidence in participation and competition.

We ensure that our children receive the highest quality physical education to develop and improve their stamina, fitness and skill level as well as improving confidence, resilience and teamwork.

Our carefully planned curriculum ensures progression through the year groups, allowing children to build incrementally and logically on skills already learnt. We utilise GetSet4PE in order to support the planning and assessing of this curriculum and ensure that all staff have what they need to provide scaffolding and challenge in each lesson.

In KS1, children will build the fundamental skills required to be physically literate and able. The focus here is on agility, balance and co-ordination. This skills based approach is key to ensuring our children are ready and able to enter a more sports focussed curriculum in KS2.

In KS2, children apply the fundamental skills learnt in KS1 in more sports specific situations. We expose our children to a variety of sports, whilst ensuring that the focus remains on developing skills which are transferable.

At Silsden, we encourage a culture of healthy competition and, throughout the year, our children have the opportunity to represent school in numerous competitive events – as well as taking part in various intra-school events.

We are keen to ensure that our children have access to a great variety of sports and our after school provision aims to offer this. We want to make sure that our children have to chance to experience as much as possible, and hopefully find a sport that they love and want to pursue. With this in mind, we offer at least one after school sports focussed club every day.

We are incredibly lucky to have the support of Miss Firth, who is a full-time member of staff responsible for aiding the development of our PE and Outdoor Learning provision (both curricular and extra-curricular). Miss Firth has years of experience in delivering Forest Schools and Physical Education in school, and her expertise is invaluable in the development of our school’s PE and Outdoor Learning provision.

We look to develop leaders within school through sport and have a network of Sports Leaders, from across KS2, whose role it is to promote and champion sport and physical activity throughout school. They meet regularly with Miss Firth to develop their own leadership skills and confidence before, delivering structured sessions in the playground to their peers.

We truly believe in the profound and positive impact that sport and being physically active can have on a child’s life. From self-belief, to physical competency , to mental wellbeing, sport has the power to alter lives and it is our sincerest hope to arm our children with the confidence and skills that they can carry with them into their adult lives.

 

“A successful competition for me is always going out there and putting 100 percent into whatever I’m doing. It’s not always winning … People, I think, mistake that it’s just winning. Sometimes it could be, but for me, it’s hitting the best sets I can, gaining confidence and having a good time and having fun.”

– Simone Biles