Awesome PE in 5 wAys

Course Overview

This course provides a great foundation to consider how to build an AWESOME PE offer at your school. It will take you approximately 3-5 hours to complete.

The course provides insight, support and challenge on the following 5 As to creating a great experience for your students in physical education:

• Ambitions – at the heart of everything you need more than just the learning aims or intentions for students, your why needs to be more ACE (ambitious, challenging and exciting) than that. This lesson will help you consider and capture a purpose (intent) for PE that is right for your school
• Atmosphere – how will you create that buzz and appetite for learning in your teaching spaces? How will you achieve it with all your groups, day in and day out? This lesson also explores how you can ensure all colleagues who deliver PE are committed to the same priorities
• Approaches – what methods and models-based practice will you use? Many PE teachers are guilty of resorting to teacher centred direct instruction and skill-drill teaching with a focus on technique but is that the best way to excite all learners and promote progress? This lesson will introduce you to more student-centred approaches like Sport Education, Teaching Games for Understanding and Health-Based PE
• Assessment – how do you utilise diagnostic, formative and summative assessment that values holistic development and not just what is easy to measure? This lesson will help you align what and how you assess to your curriculum intent
• Activities – what SPAM (sport, physical activity & movement) vehicles and learning tasks you utilise should be selected based on needs and motivations of your students not logistics, teacher preferences and tradition. This lesson will help you consider and select the most appropriate activities to build into your curriculum offer based on a needs analysis

The course brings ideas from research and practice to life through a rich variety of video clips, blog articles, low stakes quizzes and tasks. It is perfect for primary school PE subject leaders or secondary PE practitioners who want to ‘tweak to transform’ their offer via a high impact but short course.

You can complete the 5 lessons in bite-sized chunks or all in one go with anytime anywhere access via our website.

You will be able to see the ideas and contributions of other participants via discussion threads along the way. You will also be invited to join the next live 60 minute Zoom meeting that will bring together others who have recently completed the online materials to collaborate, reflect on learning and ask questions of the course instructors. Our intention is to run one of these each term. We will share the next available date and time with you once booked on the course.

All participants will be invited to upload a resource to capture their learning and thinking at the end of the course. In doing so, you will unlock access to a growing library of ideas to help progress and support your thinking further.

Each lesson is fully asynchronous, meaning you can log on whenever you want to complete the content. On completion you will be awarded a certificate for your professional development records.

Instructors

Delivered by award-winning physical education experts from some of the UK’s leading universities.

Will Swaithes

Will Swaithes is an experienced teacher, teacher educator and leader of teaching and learning. With over 20 years’ experience in education, he is currently a Senior Lecturer in Physical Education at Birmingham City University leading the secondary PGCE programme whilst also contributing to Initial Teacher Education at several other institutions including Loughborough and Buckingham universities. Will is Education Director at PE Scholar, a Specialist Leader of Education (SLE) for Redhill Academy, previous Head of Physical Education and Achievement for Youth Sport Trust (YST), previous Assistant Head for Teaching and Learning and author of an OCR GCSE PE textbook. He achieved Advanced Skills Teacher (AST) status in 2006 and also holds a Masters in Educational Leadership. Will has a reputation for high-quality consultancy services, mentoring support and training with an ambition to ensure PE stands for Positive Experiences for all children in all schools.

Dr Liz Durden-Myers

Liz is a physical education researcher and teacher educator with over 15 years’ experience within education across the primary, secondary and higher education sectors. She is a Senior Lecturer in Physical Education at the University of Gloucestershire & Bath Spa University, and Past Chair of the International Physical Literacy Association (IPLA). Liz is a qualified teacher and holds a PhD in Physical Literacy, a MA in Education, a MSc in Psychology and a BA (Hons) in Physical Education. Her research interests include Education, Physical Education, Philosophy, Health, Sport and Wellbeing. She has specific expertise in Physical Literacy, Teaching Pedagogy, Curriculum Design and Teacher Professional Development. Liz is an international speaker, passionate educator and physical activity advocate who champions the value of physical activity for life, for health, wellbeing and human flourishing.

The intention of this short course is to provide PE curriculum leaders with rich ideas and a structure to build a better offer for students in their context.