A specialist teacher is employed to oversee and deliver Physical Education lessons as well as the extra curricula sporting opportunities. All classes take part in one 40 minute Physical Education lesson per week. Learning is planned using the Australian Curriculum, focusing on the development of essential gross motor and movement skills and concepts. Students are assessed on their skills, performance, sportsmanship, teamwork and attitudes.
The school has a number of facilities for teaching Physical Education lessons including an undercover gym area, school oval and hall for movement sessions.
Students are given the chance to take part in a variety of school sporting activities every year, these include our inter-house sports carnivals, along with multiple opportunities to participate in inter school sports competitions each term. St Mary’s Catholic Primary School is an active member of Darwin Region School Sports which therefore, provides students a representative pathway in many sports.
Each year all students take part in an 8 day intensive swimming program facilitated by Royal Life Saving Society NT. The swimming program caters for all swimming abilities and aims to develop their confidence and understanding of water safety. This Program is not just about developing swimming techniques; it also educates children about how to respond in emergency and rescue situations, which aligns with our Health Education curriculum.
At St Mary’s we use the Physical literacy program – KIDDO. KIDDO is a specialist Fundamental Movement program developed by academics from Exercise and Sports Science in the School of Human Science at the University of Western Australia (UWA). KIDDO is implemented in the early years (Transition – Year 2) during their weekly PE lesson, and assessed throughout the school year. The KIDDO program allows us to teach, assess and report on each student by using an online assessment tool – KIDDO Challenge. This allows us to assess and track each students’ FMS development and compare our students’ data against that of children the same age throughout Australia. Students are assessed individually on the Fundamental Movement Skill of balance, jump for distance, kick for distance, bounce and catch a ball. This information is provided to parents via a parent report.
St Mary’s Catholic Primary School is registered as a Sporting School and receives funding from the Federal government to assist in the delivery of a comprehensive and varied program. Funds are used to employ suitably qualified coaches to deliver sessions and to purchase resources for the program.
Students are expected to wear their school sports uniform on their scheduled PE days and for sporting events only. On other days of the week they are expected to wear their normal school uniform.
