Teaching should ensure that when 'evaluating and improving performance', connections are made between 'developing, selecting and applying skills, tactics and compositional ideas', and 'fitness and health'.
During Key Stage 1 pupils build on their natural enthusiasm for movement, using it to explore and learn about their world. They start to work and play with other pupils in pairs and small groups. By watching, listening and experimenting, they develop their skills in movement and coordination, and enjoy expressing and testing themselves in a variety of situations.
Knowledge, skills and understanding
Acquiring and developing skills
1. Pupils should be taught to:
a. explore basic skills, actions and ideas with increasing understanding
b. remember and repeat simple skills and actions with increasing control and coordination.
Selecting and applying skills, tactics and compositional ideas
2. Pupils should be taught to:
a. explore how to choose and apply skills and actions in sequence and in combination
b. vary the way they perform skills by using simple tactics and movement phrases
c. apply rules and conventions for different activities.
Evaluating and improving performance
3. Pupils should be taught to:
a. describe what they have done
b. observe, describe and copy what others have done
c. use what they have learnt to improve the quality and control of their work.
Knowledge and understanding of fitness and health
4. Pupils should be taught:
a. how important it is to be active
b. to recognise and describe how their bodies feel during different activities.
Breadth of study
5. During the key stage, pupils should be taught the knowledge, skills and understanding through dance activities, games activities and gymnastic activities.
Dance activities
6. Pupils should be taught to:
a. use movement imaginatively, responding to stimuli, including music, and performing basic skills [for example, travelling, being still, making a shape, jumping, turning and gesturing]
b. change the rhythm, speed, level and direction of their movements
c. create and perform dances using simple movement patterns, including those from different times and cultures
d. express and communicate ideas and feelings.
Games activities
7. Pupils should be taught to:
a. travel with, send and receive a ball and other equipment in different ways
b. develop these skills for simple net, striking/fielding and invasion-type games
c. play simple, competitive net, striking/fielding and invasion-type games that they and others have made, using simple tactics for attacking and defending.
Gymnastic activities
8. Pupils should be taught to:
a. perform basic skills in travelling, being still, finding space and using it safely, both on the floor and using apparatus
b. develop the range of their skills and actions [for example, balancing, taking off and landing, turning and rolling]
c. choose and link skills and actions in short movement phrases
d. create and perform short, linked sequences that show a clear beginning, middle and end and have contrasts in direction, level and speed.
Swimming activities and water safety
9. Pupils should be taught to:
a. move in water [for example, jump, walk, hop and spin, using swimming aids and support]
b. float and move with and without swimming aids
c. feel the buoyancy and support of water and swimming aids
d. propel themselves in water using different swimming aids, arm and leg actions and basic strokes.
Explanatory notes and cross-curriculum references
Note for 3a - Cross reference to English
En1 Speaking and listening: Speaking
1. To speak clearly, fluently and confidently to different people, pupils should be taught to:
a. speak with clear diction and appropriate intonation
b. choose words with precision
c. organise what they say
d. focus on the main point(s)
e. include relevant detail
f. take into account the needs of their listeners
Note for 4 - Cross reference to science
Sc2 Life processes and living things: Humans and other animals
2. During the key stage, pupils should be taught:
c. that taking exercise and eating the right types and amounts of food help humans to keep healthy
Note for 6 - Cross reference to music
Responding and reviewing - appraising skills
3. Pupils should be taught how to:
a. explore and express their ideas and feelings about music using movement, dance and expressive and musical language
Listening, and applying knowledge and understanding
4. Pupils should be taught:
d. how music is used for particular purposes [for example, for dance, as a lullaby]
Breadth of study
5. During the key stage, pupils should be taught the knowledge, skills and understanding through:
b. responding to a range of musical and non-musical starting points
Note for 6, 8 - ICT opportunity
Pupils could use videos of movements and actions to develop their ideas.
Note for 8 - ICT opportunity
Pupils could use a concept keyboard to record the order of specific actions in their sequences.
Note for 9
Schools can also choose to teach swimming during Key Stage 1. Paragraph 9 gives non-statutory guidelines, which identify aspects of swimming activities and water safety appropriate for key
Health and safety note
The general teaching requirement for health and safety applies in this subject.
