Waking up to learning through PESS

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Waking up to learning through PESS

At South Petherwin CP Junior & Infant School, we shared the objectives of the Cornwall Partnership. We wanted to increase pupils’ engagement in PESS and encourage them to be more focused in PE lessons. We also wanted to improve pupils’ concentration levels throughout the day and prepare them better for learning in subjects across the curriculum.

What did we do?

We introduced a Wake Up to Learning programme based on brain gym, geared towards stimulating communication between the left and right sides of the brain. After drinking some water, we encouraged the children to massage their ‘brain buttons’ (around their collarbones, to stimulate the carotid arteries). We then taught them various exercises designed to improve their coordination and concentration skills. We even tailored the exercises to focus on motivating the pupils for different skills, such as numeracy or reading. Different classes carried out these Wake Up sessions at different times of the day to keep concentration levels high. Having taught one class about the new Wake Up programme, they demonstrated the techniques to the whole school in assembly.

The school had experienced many staff changes in a short space of time, which gave us the opportunity to start to improve our PE provision as a new team. In PE lessons, we started using ‘child-speak’ core task booklets, adapting the language used for different year groups. This had an enormous impact on the confidence and skills of both pupils and teachers. We laminated the sheets to make A3 display posters that we could use to track pupils’ achievements.

We started to offer a wider range of choices and opportunities in PE and timetabled more PE lessons for the mornings. This demonstrated to pupils that it is an important subject at South Petherwin and means that they are able to learn new skills when they are fresher and more alert. On a practical level, we found that it meant we could use the space available more effectively.

We also extended the number of after-school clubs on offer. Over the past five years we have introduced football, netball, tag rugby, PE multi-skills and gymnastics, most of which are available to both key stage 1 and 2 pupils. The clubs were kick-started by expert coaches, who then trained teaching assistants and parents to run them successfully.

To tackle potential problems during the transition from year 6 to year 7, we invited one of our School Sport Coordinators (SSCos) from Launceston College to observe the children and judge their individual achievement levels in gymnastics. We felt that this would help pupils and avoid any disappointment if they were assessed at a lower level when they entered secondary school. We are intending to extend this joint assessment process into other areas of activity to give the pupils a feeling of continuity when they change school.

What difference did we make?

Before we began our ‘Wake Up to Learning’ programme, our pupils had poor concentration levels and were not ready for learning when they arrived at school in the morning. Now they are much more focused and are able to maintain concentration throughout the day. As a baseline indicator, one member of staff took some readings for backwards-number spans, an exercise in which five random numbers are called out and pupils are required to write them down in reverse order. When she repeated this after introducing the brain gym programme, there was an astonishing 50 per cent improvement in pupils’ performance.

At the start of our involvement in the PESS project, teaching staff were interested in PE but very aware of gaps in their expertise and confidence. A frank audit of our PE skills revealed that teaching of dance and gymnastics was particularly weak. PE was not a high-profile subject in school and, apart from usual participation in matches, was not celebrated as a significant part of school life.

Now our teaching staff are much more confident when tackling PE and recognise it as a key subject that influences performance across the curriculum. Timetabling PE sessions in the morning has delivered the message that it is a ‘serious’ subject. Encouraging pupils to become more involved in their own PE learning has increased their confidence, motivation and leadership skills. Staff have commented that the school as a whole is benefiting from this new enthusiasm and readiness to learn. Pupils are much more keen to participate in PE lessons and we rarely have excuse notes or missing kit.

At the start of the project, we took baseline records of pupils’ levels of PE skills and fitness (jump heights, stamina, stretching and so on). When we repeated these tests after changing our approach to PE, we were delighted to note a very marked improvement in pupils’ stamina and performance across the whole school.

We are currently monitoring the joint assessment process we have put in place to see whether it smooths the transition between years 6 and 7.