Yearly plan

This section will show you an example of the units that I cover in the PYP programme.

Planning the year

Planning your units at the start of the year can be a difficult task, especially when there are certain conditions to meet, which could be set by the school, curriculum or the framework. In this case, the IBO do provide a framework in the PSPE handbook, which identifies what is considered to be part of the balanced curriculum. You can also see this in the image below.

Using the above as a guideline, you can then decide which of your units fit into the five experiences above. When I first started in the PYP, I was clueless, so I just followed the same format as above and decided that swimming and athletics would fall under the individual pursuits category. This format made sure that I was following the IB guidelines, but also making full use of our facilities (we just had a new swimming pool installed at that time).

I used these five experiences and fit them into the three PSPE strands (Active living, Identity and Interactions), so then I am fulfilling all of the requirements by the IB. I believe this is where the PE programmes may differ from school to school. I may consider Games to fall under active living, however another practitioner may consider games to fit better under Interactions. There is nothing wrong with this and it just depends on your beliefs with where you think everything fits, but as long you as you fulfil the objectives set for each strand, you will be fulfiling the IB requirements. Below is an example of how I fit my units under each strand.

Some schools have used their units differently to what I have, for example, they teach a game unit to fulfil the adventure challenges experience, whereas I focus on problem solving, team building and outdoor pursuit activites. Having taught this for two years now, I would make changes to the yearly plan. I often find the games unit rushed, as we only have 5-6 lessons to cover as much as we can and they often do not experience any net games. Therefore, I would exclude health realted activities as a unit, include another games unit and achieve the health objectives through all of the units across the year. Another option is to do the units through sports, which is something we do in the MYP programme, but I believe exposing the students to a variety of units at this age is more beneficial. It's trying to finding the right balance, which is the challenge.

Below is an example of how I plan my units across the year. You will see that some classes do different units at different times of the year. This is purely down to the availability of facilities so activities can be conducted safely. With these changes, it also makes it difficult to link the Unit of Inquiry with the PE statement of inquiry, but in this programme, the strongly linked units would get priority.