PE and Sportitude

What Is Sportitude?

Sportitude was originally a name thought up by the pupils at Heron Park several years ago. At this stage there was a heavy focus on using sport to promote positive life traits through sport.

Fast-forward and Heron Park has been the proud recipient of back-to-back School Games Gold Awards and the name Sportitude remains. We, of course continue to use PE as a method of encouraging teamwork, fairness, honesty and all the other wonderful life skills that sport teaches, but PE has become part of the fabric of the school and our efforts have been equalled by our achievements.

In the past (pre Covid) Heron Park has entered teams into over 25 area sports competitions and festivals. Some of these are participation only (non-competitive), but of those that were competitive, our teams have won 5 local area championships and 4 regional finals and qualified for 5 county finals and enjoyed numerous top-3 finishes! The highlights being our U9s (Y3/4) Girls winning the Premier League Cup East Sussex Football Tournament and our Girl’s Cricket team finishing runners-up in the South Downs area Y6 competition despite most of the team only being in Y4. Now that tournaments are starting up again, we hope to build on these past performances.

Curriculum Time PE

Each class receives one Sportitude lesson per week, delivered by both Sportitude coaches and the class teacher. The adults team-teach to develop the non-specialist class teacher’s sporting and coaching skills. In addition to this, when the weather allows, all KS2 classes have another PE lesson with their class teacher and will receive 3 blocks of 6 weeks of swimming lessons during their time at the Academy – usually in Years 4,5 and 6.

PE lessons through the year cover the requirements of the National Curriculum.

Term 1 - 3 weeks Team Building Skills / OAA, 4 weeks Ball Skills / Invasion Games

Term 2 - 6 weeks Ball Skills / Invasion Games

Term 3 - 6 weeks Dance

Term 4 - 6 weeks Gymnastics

Term 5 - 6 weeks Athletics

Term 6 - 7 weeks Striking and Fielding Games / Over the Net Games

KS1 children have PE lessons that are focused on developing skills whilst instilling an early love of sports and games. When young children enjoy and become engaged in sports from the very early days, it is likely that they will forge a life-long positive relationship with sports and a healthy life-style. If, by the time the pupils reach KS2, they have a love of sport with a solid range of skills, it is likely that they will develop into highly competent sportspeople by the time they move onto secondary education. Hopefully, they will also win multiple area-sports titles while they are with us at Heron Park!

Clubs and Scholarships

Our after school clubs are well attended and offer a variety of activities to appeal to everyone. We currently have many different clubs, offering a huge variety of activities ranging from Football and Cricket to Nerf and Dance.

Through our PE Premium allocation and Pupil Premium Grant, which the government funds, we also offer part-funded scholarship places throughout the year.

These places are offered to those children who display talent and enthusiasm towards a particular sport.

A full guide to the sports and dance clubs is shown in the “Sports & Dance Clubs” section of the website and all clubs available to your child(ren) are available through your ParentPay account.