Slovakia Primary 4 Curriculum - Sports

This curriculum focuses on physical, functional, and movement development, contributing to health, fitness, and physical performance. It provides basic theoretical and practical education in physical activities and sports, significantly contributing to the psychological, social, and moral development of students. It also plays an important compensatory role in the education process.

The curriculum uses a wide range of movement tools that contribute to the overall formation of personality with an emphasis on gross and fine motor skills. Through exercises, games, and competitions, it positively influences the health of students.

The curriculum has three basic parts: Health and a Healthy Lifestyle, Physical Fitness and Movement Performance, and Sports Activities of the Movement Regime. These parts combine the movement and health-oriented concept of physical education. The Sports Activities section is divided into basic thematic units with a recommended time allocation:

• Basic Movement Skills (30%)
• Handling, Preparatory, and Sports Games (30%)
• Music-Movement and Dance Activities (15%)
• Psychomotor and Health-Oriented Exercises (10%)
• Activities in Nature and Seasonal Movement Activities (15%)

The basic organizational form is a 45-minute lesson, involving all students classified in the 1st and 2nd health groups, or the 3rd health group (integrated teaching). Students with health impairments or disabilities (3rd health group) can be taught separately in a health-focused physical education department, with the content of teaching implemented according to separate educational programs.

Subject Goals

Students will:

• Gain knowledge about the impact of exercise on health and perceive physical activity as a means of improving health.
• Acquire basic knowledge and insights into physical education and sports.
• Develop an elementary age-appropriate understanding of their own movement possibilities.
• Gain a positive attitude towards physical education, physical activities, and sports.
• Apply the principles of hygiene and safety during physical activity.
• Develop cultivated movement expression with an emphasis on correct posture.
• Acquire basic movement skills related to performing basic locomotion, non-locomotion movement skills, and selected sports.
• Develop movement abilities for optimal development of health-oriented physical fitness through appropriate physical exercises.
• Understand the importance of diagnostics in physical education as a means of obtaining information about the level of their own physical fitness.

Educational Standard of the Subject

The educational standard is divided into several sections, including:

1. Health and Healthy Lifestyle: Students will identify the characteristics of a healthy lifestyle, distinguish between healthy and unhealthy nutrition, recognize the dangers of addictive substances, explain the importance of physical activity for human health, recognize basic ways and the importance of hardening the body, observe hygiene requirements during physical activity, apply safety principles during exercise, describe the principles of first aid in various environments, and describe the characteristics of correct posture in various positions.

2. Physical Fitness and Movement Performance: Students will explain the importance of movement performance diagnostics for health and personal physical, motor, and functional development, individually improve in specified indicators of selected tests, measure pulse rate on the carotid artery, recognize basic signs of fatigue during physical exertion, and use tools for the development of movement abilities.

3. Sports Activities of the Movement Regime: This section is further divided into the following thematic units:

• Basic Movement Skills: Students will name basic commands and formations of drill exercises, use basic commands and react correctly to them with movement, explain the importance and need for warm-up before performing physical activity, name basic movement skills, master the technique of running, jumping into the pit, and throwing a tennis ball, name and perform basic body positions and its parts, and master the technique of basic acrobatic exercises in various variations and combinations and jumps.
• Handling, Preparatory, and Sports Games: Students will characterize basic concepts related to games, name basic game activities of an individual, exchange the names of games implemented in teaching, apply agreed rules in the game and respect them, master the technique of handling equipment, apply handling of equipment in a movement or preparatory sports game, master the game activities of an individual in games implemented in teaching, and use learned skills from games in various environments.
• Music-Movement and Dance Activities: Students will exchange basic concepts of rhythmic and modern gymnastics, name dance steps implemented in teaching, perform a demonstration of rhythmic exercises, coordinate body movements, walking, jumping, and running with the rhythm induced by clapping, sound signal, or music, master basic dance steps and dance motifs in various variations implemented in teaching, create short combinations and motifs from learned dance steps of folk or modern dances, apply elements of rhythm and dance in music-movement, dance, and dramatic games, and improvise on a given theme or musical motif.
• Psychomotor and Health-Oriented Exercises and Games: Students will gradually relax the muscles of the limbs or the whole body with verbal accompaniment, describe basic ways of breathing, perform simple stretching exercises, characterize psychomotor exercises, explain the essence of psychomotor exercises and their meaning, and apply learned skills in exercises and games.
• Activities in Nature and Seasonal Movement Activities: Students will exchange basic types of implemented seasonal movement activities, master the movement skills of selected seasonal activities, apply elements of seasonal movement activities in games, competitions, at school or in free time, safely move in different spaces and under different conditions, overcome various terrain inequalities by movement, and explain the importance and principles of nature protection during movement activities in it.