Medium Term Plan - Gymnastics - Year 1

The Year 1 Gymnastics scheme, designed for a six-lesson duration, aims to introduce young learners to the fundamentals of body management. Throughout the course, students will engage in activities that develop their ability to perform and improve simple balances, rolls, and turns on the floor. The lessons are structured to encourage exploration and replication of movements, enhancing control, direction, and stillness. A significant aspect of the curriculum is to instil an understanding of the benefits of exercise for health, as well as to foster turn-taking and teamwork skills. Students will gain knowledge in accurately replicating movements, using actions in sequences, and the social skills of sharing and taking turns.

The practical implementation of the plan involves a variety of tasks, each with specific objectives to develop different gymnastic skills such as shapes, balances, travelling, jumps, and rolls. For instance, the first week focuses on travelling movements, using games like 'Cars and Tunnels' and 'Frog Stuck in the Mud' to teach students how to move in various ways, including hopping and skipping. As the weeks progress, the complexity of the movements and sequences increases, with an emphasis on developing physical and mental capacity, refining skills, and decision-making. The curriculum also integrates cross-curricular links with literacy and numeracy and provides assessment opportunities through questions and answers, discussions, and observations of technique replication. By the end of the programme, students will have progressed from copying basic actions with limited coordination to developing routines that demonstrate control, creativity, and an understanding of performance refinement.