The wellbeing of our whole school community is at the heart of our ethos at Farsley Springbank Primary School. We aim for all pupils, families and members of staff to progress as positive, empowered, productive and healthy members of our local and wider community. Our children will have opportunities to compete in both team and personal challenges that build character and help to embed the School Games Values including respect and honesty. PESSPA at Springbank is an imperative element of the curriculum, which develops a lifelong understanding of the importance for healthy life styles, a balanced diet, positive growth mind-set and the resilience to persevere with activities that may be once have felt too difficult. At Springbank, we value mistakes and aim to instill this into our children by using mistakes as a tool for learning. We are passionate about the need to teach children how to cooperate and collaborate with others, as part of a team and also through their own creativity and initiative.
“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” Michael Jordan.
PE is not constrained within its two hours of timetabled curriculum time but lives within our daily routines. We are on a journey to embed Learning Outside the Classroom, Young Leadership and continuous self-assessment. We provide a range of high quality experiences for our children, designed to be inclusive and challenging to all. Our PE lessons are structured around the AfPE scheme of work for Primary Schools because of its high-quality planning and the fact that it has been written by PE specialists to allow all children access to high quality core PE teaching. The scheme builds on skills learnt in previous year groups and, as children progress from KS1 to KS2, they are able to apply these skills to a variety of engaging sport-specific situations. Through the scheme, children revisit skills and begin to make links between current and previous learning. The scheme also provides children with excellent opportunities to learn through competition at personal and intra-competition.
Staff members are dedicated to the provision of extra-curricular competition and we aim to provide all children the opportunity to compete at increasingly high levels as they move through their Springbank journey. Throughout their time with us, children are encouraged to take on extra responsibilities with a view to becoming Sport Leaders by the time they reach Year 6. This is a responsibility that is incredibly highly sought after by the children who take the added workload and responsibility seriously. Sport Leaders, with the assistance of staff, school council and other children, are beginning to plan and implement a variety of events throughout the year such as Key Stage 1 multi-sports festival, Sports Day and Physical Activity sessions at break and lunchtime. We buy into the West Leeds Sports Partnership and the Well School Partnership, which enables every pupil in the school the opportunity to access inclusive, non-competitive sports festivals where personal challenge is the focus, as well as come and try, friendly and competitive levels of inter-school sports tournaments, from cross country to rugby to tri-golf. Additionally, our sports partnership provides opportunities to further challenge and develop our more advanced pupils, as well as conferences, CPD and support for staff.
We work hard as a PE community to maintain links across ages, genders, abilities and locations - this community is a resource we aim for our children to engage with, now and for their futures. Every pupil in Year 5 accesses a full year of intensive swimming teaching. Our Young Leaders have ownership of annual sports-based charity events such as Sports Relief where this is appropriate. To expand horizons, we have links with local clubs in order for all children to have an exit-pathway from our extra-curricular and PE offer. We buy in expert provision from Phoenix Dance Theatre Company and the Leeds Rhinos foundation which all children access for at least a half term per year. As a school which sits within a wider community, we engage in local events where possible.
We strive for our pupils to engage with the world in which they live, to care for it, and ultimately, to care for themselves within it.