Students at Good Samaritan have Physical Education/Sport each week. All students participate in the School Athletics and Cross Country Carnivals. Eligible students participate in the Swimming Carnival. After these carnivals squads are chosen to represent the School at Regional and Diocesan Carnivals. Students can then be selected to compete at MacKillop and State levels. Good Samaritan has a clear policy regarding student participation in sporting gala days and representation at competitive sports. Parents are asked to become familiar with this policy.  

For Physical Education we will focus on endurance and ball skills to prepare for the Cross Country this term and develop the skills to play net and court games effectively. Students will perform and refine movement skills in variety of movement sequences and contexts, examples include: 

• Perform activities where locomotor, object control and stability skills are combined to complete a movement sequence, activity or game, eg running, dodging and sidestepping. 
• Explore and practise different techniques to propel objects towards a target, eg running, jumping and throwing techniques in court games
• Participate and use equipment in a variety of games and modified sports
• Adapt movement skills to improve accuracy and control in a variety of contexts

Students will also be provided with opportunities to develop their self-management and interpersonal skills, including leadership, communication, collaboration, problem-solving, persistence and decision-making through movement and physical activity. 

This term in PDHPE, Year 4 will be involved in two units that focus on the  content strands of “Health, Wellbeing & Relationships” and “Healthy, safe and active lifestyles”. 

The first unit involves supporting a whole school approach to explicitly teaching the following social and emotional skills as well as skills essential for classroom expectations. Keep an eye on the weekly newsletter for more information. 

Topics include: 

Active listening - What do good listeners do, Following teachers instructions

Good communication - What good speakers do, Communicating with teacher/adults, Communicating with peers, the role of Verbal & non-verbal communication, Asking for help

Group work - Think, pair, share class strategy, Partner work, Small group work

Managing challenges - Agreeing and disagreeing, staying on task 

Zones of Regulation - Role of emotions, managing emotions.

Our second unit focuses on Personal Identity/ Relationships/ Mental Health & Wellbeing Students explore how success, challenge and overcoming adversity strengthens identity. They investigate how emotional responses vary in depth and strength and describe how  their own and other’s skills and strategies contribute to healthy and safe outcomes. This is taught through the concept of “Growth Mindset”.

‘Growth Mindset’ is a concept, based on the research of Dr Carol Dweck and is primarily supporting students to develop resilience.  Resilience is an important quality for children to develop if they are going to flourish. According to Carol Dweck’s research, people have two different mindsets: a fixed mindset or a growth mindset. A fixed mindset is the belief that intelligence can't be changed. A growth mindset is the belief that success is the result of practice, effort and hard work.

SUPPORTING YOUR CHILD’S LEARNING

How can you support a growth mindset in your children?

The most important thing you can do to help your child instill a growth mindset is to praise them for effort rather than for talent. Messages like “You learned that so quickly! You’re so smart!” teach the child that they either are or aren’t smart, and that effort is a sign of weakness. When they encounter difficulty in the future, they tend to then feel not smart and retreat. Instead, messages such as “I like the way you approached that problem”, or “good job to hang in there and find a different strategy that did work”, or “sorry, that seemed to be too easy for you, let’s do something more challenging”, teaches kids that effort is something we can all benefit from to reach our full potential, and that they need to be working purposefully in order to grow.