KS3

Key Stage 3:

All students at St Patrick’s College complete 80 minutes of Core PE per week from year 8 right through to year 10. During these lessons students participate in a wide range of sporting activities and are assessed in the following areas; performance, fitness, healthy active lifestyles, tactics and strategies, ability to evaluate and improve performance, team work and leadership. Within Core PE lessons students are taught the importance of being active and teachers work hard to ensure PE lessons are fun and engaging for students to promote lifelong participation in sport outside of school.

At Key Stage 3, students have the opportunity to:

· Develop skills in physical activity

· Make and apply decisions

· Develop physical and mental capacity to cope with challenging environments

· Peer and self-evaluate through assessment

· Make informal choices about healthy, active lifestyles

PE in years 8, 9 and 10 builds on the knowledge, skills and understanding of our students' Key Stage 2 experience. Students will build on and embed the physical development and skills learned becoming more competent, confident and expert in their techniques, and apply them across different sports and physical activities. Students will be taught to use a range of tactics and strategies to overcome opponents in direct competition through team and individual games, for example; gaelic, hurling/camogie, badminton, basketball, football, netball and rounders.

Students will also be given the opportunity to develop their technique and improve their performance in other competitive sports, for example, athletics and gymnastics whilst building trust and developing skills to solve problems, both individually and in groups.

Throughout years 8, 9 and 10, students will be taught to understand and apply the long-term health benefits of physical activity, with a particular emphasis on fitness development as well as analysing their performances compared to previous ones and demonstrate improvement to achieve their personal best.

The Physical Education Department has four specialist teachers with a range of additional qualifications which enable us to offer a wide variety of activities to the students. The specialist members of staff are supplemented by other members who are keen to be involved in promoting the aims of the department.

At Key Stage 3 the Curriculum programme includes the following activities:

Minor games

• Soccer
• Netball/basketball
• Hurling/camogie
• Gaelic football
• Rugby
• Badminton
• Gymnastics
• Athletics
• Rounders
• Dance

• Swimming

  In addition to the above programme Key Stage 4 pupils are also introduced to a number of health related fitness activities these include:

• Weight training
• Circuit training
• Orienteering
• Swimming/lifesaving
• Table Tennis
• Volleyball
• Trampolining

The courses we offer are exciting and varied; introducing pupils to many aspects of sport which we hope will encourage them to have a healthy attitude to sport and recreation for the rest of their lives.