Athletics

Athletics is fun!

These comprehensive and user-friendly athletics manuals for Key Stages 1 & 2 are aimed at developing children's all-round physical and athletic fluency through a wide range of enjoyable and stimulating activities and challenges based on the core actions of walking, running, jumping and throwing.

These activities and challenges are suitable, for all children either as they are written, with a change of equipment or slightly adapted for different needs. They are intended to stimulate interest and boost self-esteem. They shift the emphasis away from always making judgements about winning or losing, to setting and acheiving goals for the improvement of personal best times or distances or team performances. This stimulates interest in athletics, makes lessons more physically active, and retains the competitive element in a positive way. Children instantly recognise when improvements have been made, and indeed, they are clearly visible and can be recorded.

This teaching manual follows the same comprehensive and detailed format of the Primary School Gymnastics, Games and Dance manuals. It follows the same structure of the teaching guide, detailed teaching material in units of work, and skill development and challenges in the Appendix. In common with all the other Val Sabin manuals, it follows National Curriculum requirements, links with Q.C.A. guidance and outcomes and develops the four strands - acquiring and developing skills, selecting and applying skills, tactics and compositional ideas, evaluating and improving performance, and knowledge and understanding of fitness and health.

All the lessons are planned as part of a progressive and developmental, whole-school scheme of work and allow opportunities for using a range of teaching strategies, individual, pair and group work, independent learning and self/peer assessment. Teacher assessment sheets and planned athletics events at the end of each year of work complete this huge, user-friendly resource.