I’m sorry it has taken me so long to post this. I always intended on providing more detail regarding my experiences during my recent ‘Deep Dive’ experience, but I’ve been too busy to be able to process the events and type out my responses. The idea of this blog is simple. I’ve added my answers to the questions I was fielded!
I hope that by doing so it might help some of you in the future, not that I would wish a deep dive on you. But to adopt the current buzzwords, if your intent, implementation and impact is clear and coherent – you really will be fine.
What it involved…
- 25 minute meeting w/ P.E Specialist & P.E Co-ordinator
- 2 x 45 minute observations of P.E Specialist and Class Teachers modelling how CPD sessions are organised & quality of T & L (The Inspector was present throughout all of both sessions)
- A meeting with pupils to discuss P.E at the School with them. 3 each from the classes she observed, the Inspector asked from 1 ‘M/A’, 1 ‘L/A’ and a child ‘from the middle’ (we were allowed to select the children!)
Questions fielded during meeting (the Inspector informed us towards the end of meeting that she would spend the rest of the afternoon trying to find evidence to support the statements during the meeting)
What would I expect to see in a typical P.E lesson here?
Fun, Kids out of breath, Enthusiasm, we feel that the kids genuinely enjoy trying to get better at whatever they’re learning about. Our children show progress and we can evidence this.
The intent of our P.E delivery is to ensure that all of our children:
1) Understand and love living a healthy, active life.
2) To develop a broad and deep range of skills enabling them to participate in at least one physical activity for the rest of their life.
Our P.E curriculum is broad and exciting – our kids improve in many physical activities.
How do you make sure children progress?
Careful monitoring and assessment (formative and summative). I then showed the inspector our ‘P.E Statements’ – these are basically the areas that we assess the children’s progress against. The inspector looked at these in detail even though we had been told during a training session that no Inspector would look at any paper documents you tried to show them. She asked some questions regarding the ‘pitch’ of the statements. Essentially we had a discussion regarding if we were too ambitious in what we were expecting the children to be able to do at the end of Year 6. Fortunately one of the lessons she was about to observe me teach was a Year 6 class, we left this point of discussion with me declaring something along the lines of ‘I know what we expect could be considered ambitious, but we know our children, we believe in our teachers, the Schemes of work are having a very positive effect and you’ll see how well it is working this afternoon’. I then immediately realised I had put myself under more unnecessary pressure.
How do you know children progress?
The assessment system that our Schools use enables us to pin point where the children make progress and when. This enabled us to show the Inspector the assessment sheets where we could explain that certain children made progress in a strand, and that the difference in colour denotes when the progress was made. The Inspector asks who wrote all of the lesson plans, and if the class teachers in the School received any support making these assessments. They do, both through 1-to-1 CPD with myself and the structure of the lesson plans themselves. On the lesson plans all text in italics refers to additional guidance on differentiation and on each lesson plan there is also guidance on how to make judgements on the children’s progress. An example of this can be found below:
How do I know that the teachers using these Schemes of Works will ensure the children progress?
The lesson plans have been created in such a way to ensure that children’s develop their skills year on year. To support my statement I created this document that depicts how the skills developed in the last lesson of each Scheme develops in complexity, thus, ensuring progress. I provided the Inspector with this document in addition to the lesson plans – which she once again looked at. An example of this document is below:
How do you know the areas in which teachers need CPD?
We ask all of our teaching staff to complete what we call ‘CPD Self-Review’ sheets. This is a list of all activities that feature on our P.E curriculum, we then ask staff to tick ‘Red/Amber/Green’ to indicate their own perceived level of competence when teaching that activity. This allows us to analyse where a member of Staff requires support, we keep these sheets and date them. This process enables us to make exact observations on the progress of Staff over time, exactly where they have made progress and which activities to target next! Our CPD Self-Review sheet looks as below, feel free to pinch/modify the idea if it suits!
If you go (P.E Specialist) – is this sustainable? Do the teachers just forget and leave it?
My answer. Yes absolutely. I called in to this School to borrow some equipment in September and a member of Staff was teaching a Hockey lesson. I worked out that we worked together to improve her K & U of Hockey 2 years ago. If the member of Staff uses their new knowledge it sticks, similar to riding a bike. Once you can do it, if you keep doing it – it sticks!
So what is your CPD model? (I had to explain how we organise CPD and break down how I work with the Staff each half term)
I (the Trust P.E Specialist), the Headteacher and the P.E Co-ordinators of each School identify members of Staff to work with in terms of urgency. NQT’s and staff that are new to our trust usually get CPD earlier in the academic year. We then divide the amount of sessions available over the year amongst the Staff that we select. I work in 8 Schools and each School has me for half a day a week and I alternate which School I work in on a Friday offering Active Family workshops, Playground leader training and interventions in addition to running my SLE projects.
Did the kids ever get to choose their topic?
Yes sometimes! We have to consider the ‘needs’ of the teaching staff receiving CPD, but, we also know that one of the aims (the Intent) of our P.E delivery is for children to find at least one activity that they love. We want to encourage the kids in the areas that they enjoy as much as we can!
What is Parkour?!
Urban Gymnastics. The kids love it because it’s a bit edgy and cool plus you can’t be wrong in many aspects of Parkour. The kids get to play with their own physical capabilities in a non-pressured/traditional environment. Plus we play music whilst their develop their skills which also helps!
The Inspector commented that the non-traditional activities included in our curriculum were a considerable strength. Depth is essential in your P.E curriculum but so is the breadth of opportunities you offer. The wider the net, the more fish you catch!
How do you structure your swimming? What is the % of children hitting the requirements by the end of Y6?
We had to briefly explain the structure of our swimming lessons and how we support the children who may not meet the national requirements. Our answer to this is we track their progress from early in KS2. Children who we feel may struggle get extra swimming lessons and continue to swim with other classes where possible.
Do you use standardised trust wide Risk Assessments? (After I said no, the Inspector commented “Good, I see some trusts who use 1 blanket risk assessment for all Schools which isn’t advisable”)
Questions fielded to the class teacher during Observation 1
Is this normal?
Explain the standard of P.E here to me.
Is the P.E Specialist useful?
Explain to me how this topic/Scheme of Work will help all children to progress.
Have you got better at teaching P.E? How does CPD work in P.E at this School?
Would you be confident to teach this topic (Handball) independently now? (It was Lesson 6 of the CPD cycle)
Questions fielded to the kids during the lesson
(I tried to grab the kids I had seen the Inspector speak to after)
Is this normal?
Do you have P.E with Mr. Sigley and ‘xxxx’ every week? Both of them?
If you get really good at this? What will be your next challenge?
(Probing to check the kids awareness of the key teaching points) What do you need to do to make sure you complete this Challenge?
One thing that is clear to me now that the dust has settled. It would have been very hard for me to evidence and explain how we plan for progression if we didn’t have some high quality resources. Most other questions fielded could have answered without referring to any actual documentation/evidence. But to be able to display exactly how we plan for progression proved the quality of our P.E curriculum immediately, it was also the basis for many other positive conversations we had surrounding P.E in our School.
If you are reading this wondering how you would answer those questions regarding how you plan for progression. I would advise you to either write some lesson plans and ensure they are progressive or find some P.E planning that suits your School. It may not be from The Power of P.E, but having a bank of resources will give your School a framework from which to build. It will also give you piece of mind when you know who ask some tricky questions!
I hope this helps!
Craig