Episode 89 - Ben Mayes - Know, Show & GROW - Holistic and meaningful physical education

Season four begins with Ben Mayes, Head of Physical Education at Bodmin College, for a thoughtful and practical conversation about creating PE experiences that support the whole child.

Ben shares how the Know, Show & GROW framework shapes his curriculum thinking, lesson design and leadership. We explore how pupils can develop knowledge and movement competence while also learning to demonstrate resilience, empathy, persistence, independence and other qualities that extend beyond PE.

Ben challenges us to consider whether we genuinely teach and assess personal development - or whether we sometimes offer little more than definitions and brief conversations.

In this episode, we discuss:

• What Know, Show & GROW looks like within a PE lesson
• Why the GROW objective should be explicitly taught, modelled and celebrated
• Normalising struggle, failure and difficulty within learning
• Creating active arrivals and making purposeful use of changing time
• Using retrieval, questioning and conditioned games to reinforce learning
• Developing pupil autonomy, agency and ownership
• Using models-based practice, including Sport Education, Cooperative Learning and Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility
• The relationship between Know, Show & GROW and Move, Think, Feel and Connect
• Leading curriculum change and developing a shared departmental language
• What the future national curriculum might prioritise within PE

Ben also poses an important challenge:

Where does GROW rank within your PE lessons - and could your pupils explain how they have grown after the lesson has finished?

This episode offers plenty of practical ideas for PE teachers, trainees and subject leaders who want their curriculum to remain physically active while becoming more holistic, meaningful and genuinely focused on learning.

Connect with Ben on LinkedIn to follow his work and explore the resources he shares with the PE community.

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