The Physical Education Program at NOCCS acknowledges the uniqueness inherent in each student.  Students explore and practice a wide variety of movement challenges through individual exploration and group play as they move from one grade level to the next.  Although desired outcomes are noted for each grade level, there exists a fluidity from year to year as each student acquires skills at his or her own pace.  The approach is one that recognizes that all children must be given opportunities not only to succeed in physical education, but to develop a lifelong commitment to the pleasure and the health benefits of physical activity.  The overall aim of the physical education program is to help all children, regardless of their talents, skills or limitations, to develop into physically educated individuals.  A “physically educated person” is one who has mastered the necessary movement skills to participate confidently in many different forms of physical activity, values physical fitness, and understands that both are intimately related to health and well-being.

The comprehensive physical education program helps children achieve three equally important goals; each interacting continually with the others:

1.    Movement Skills and Movement Knowledge

2.    Self-Image and Personal Development

3.    Social Development

Students are introduced at age-appropriate levels to a variety of skills that are reinforced through content areas such as body movement, physical fitness education, tumbling, sports, and games.  These skills and content areas support the three main goals for the program.  In addition to developing skills in these various areas, students are encouraged to acquire understanding and knowledge about the content and skills (i.e. grasp the “why” as well as the “how”).

At the primary levels (K-3) students are learning the fundamentals of physical education, becoming more skillful, and deriving pleasure from learning new skills through experience with the various content areas.  Basic skills include walking, running, hopping, jumping, sliding, galloping, skipping, catching, throwing, kicking, balancing, bending and stretching.  Emphasis is placed on both the development of motor fitness attributes (agility, flexibility, and coordination) and the development of physical fitness attributes (cardiorespiratory fitness and muscular strength and endurance).

At the upper elementary levels (4^th / 5^th) students combine the fundamental skills that they have learned in the primary years and apply and refine the skills in new experiences.

Each class has Physical Education (PE) for a 45 minute period twice per week.