Physical Education
At Dorchester we believe that Physical Education is fundamental to the healthy development and well-being of our children. The benefits of physical activity are far-reaching and play an important role in promoting physical health and growth, the development of social and emotional skills and positively influencing academic achievement. For these reasons we make sure that Physical Education is given priority in the curriculum, with most year groups having 3 PE sessions per week. In addition to this we also offer a variety of opportunities for co-curricular involvement.
Our aim is to provide enjoyable PE experiences that develop the whole child and encourage all our children to take part in physical activity where they are supported and challenged to achieve their personal bests and experience success, whatever the activity.
We offer a broad and balanced PE Curriculum fulfilling the requirements of the National Curriculum which includes:
- Invasion games, net games, athletics, gym, dance, OAA and HRF.
- Ensuring children moving on to secondary school can swim 25m and have basic water skills.
- Opportunities to adopt different roles to develop their understanding such as officiating, evaluating and working with younger children to deliver activities and support them.
- Developing an understanding and appreciation of how being active can have a positive effect on health and well-being.
- Incorporating many opportunities for children to expand their range of social and emotional skills by collaborating, leading, competing and cooperating with others.
- Intra-school competition.
Our co-curricular programme aims to support this and offer a variety of activities to encourage as many of our children as possible to participate in clubs. We also enter a range of Borough competitions and festivals to extend these opportunities further and include more diverse experiences.
We currently offer football, netball, basketball, cross-country, Playball, tag rugby, street dance and gymnastics after-school clubs alongside targeted and open yoga sessions and have participated in a range of Borough competitions and festivals giving children the opportunity to gain from the invaluable experience of representing our school in the local community.
We believe that PE has something for everyone and through the range of participation and competitive opportunities we offer, we aim for every child to find the sport or physical activity for them. As well as those sports you would expect to see in Primary School PE, we have opportunities for less usual sports, such as bowling, climbing and archery.