Physical education is the planned, progressive learning that takes place in school curriculum timetabled time, and which is delivered to all pupils. This involves both learning to move (i.e. becoming more physically competent) and moving to learn (e.g. learning through movement, a range of skills and understandings beyond physical activity, such as co-operating with others). The context for the learning is physical activity, with pupils experiencing a broad range of activities, including sport and dance (Association for Physical Education, 2019).

Learning Across Different Domains

This definition highlights how Physical Education (PE) can develop learning across different domains and therefore, teachers should consider how they can plan activities to facilitate this.

Psychomotor (physical/ kinaesthetic) Domain

PE primarily focuses on developing pupils’ physical skills such as throwing, catching and jumping and abilities such as strength, speed and flexibility.

Teachers can plan activities that support the development and application of physical skills, e.g. planning practices and games/ challenges that involve pupils throwing different pieces of equipment in athletics, catching different sized and shaped balls in games and using different jumps in athletics.

Teachers can also provide opportunities for pupils to develop their physical abilities, e.g. challenging pupils to explore different partner balances and lifts in gymnastics and dance or introducing shuttle runs and speed bounce challenges in athletics or including stretching in the lesson cool down or involving pupils in yoga activities.

Cognitive (thinking) Domain

PE can enhance cognitive skills such as problem-solving, decision-making, and evaluation.

Teachers can plan activities that support the development of these skills, e.g. asking pupils to explore which three different jumps when linked together help them to jump the furthest, or placing targets at different distances and positions so that pupils have to decide which shot to use in games or asking pupils to observe another pupil and feedback to them whether they moved from one movement to another fluently in gymnastics.

Affective (social/emotional) Domain

PE provides opportunities for pupils to interact with peers, developing skills such as communication, cooperation and supporting others as well as contributing to emotional well-being by promoting skills such as self-confidence, resilience, and self-control.

Teachers can organise team-based and group activities and challenges to develop social skills, e.g. asking pupils to plan and guide others through a warm-up activity or organising a game that requires pupils to work together to keep possession of the ball, or asking pupils to check whether their partner is landing safely when jumping in dance or gymnastics.

Teachers can also support pupils to develop their emotional skills, e.g. breaking skills/tasks into smaller steps and giving pupils lots of time to practise so that they develop their competence and in turn their confidence in performing them or introducing new skills, activities or tasks that will challenge the pupils whilst encouraging them to ask for help and keep trying even if they fail or are nervous to try or assigning pupils different roles such as referee, coach or placing them in a different position in a team game so that they experience activities from others’ perspectives.

Strategies to Support Learning

In addition to planning activities to support the development of these skills teachers can use various strategies to deepen learning across all the domains:

• Produce learning journeys or progressions that show how to progress learning across all domains.
• Teach key vocabulary linked to all domains.
• Share learning objectives/ intentions/ outcomes with the pupils that include both a physical (psychomotor domain) and non-physical skill (cognitive or affective domains).
• Celebrate achievement of all skills by giving specific praise and feedback or rewarding pupils for demonstrating desirable behaviours (cognitive or affective domains) as well as performance (psychomotor domain).
• Revisit and reflect on learning across all domains in mini plenaries throughout and plenaries at the end of the lesson.