#162 Overwhelmed by the New K-6 Primary PDHPE Syllabus? Start Here

In 2004 I walked into my first Year 12 CAFS class with a syllabus and the purple textbook. That was it. I took that textbook home every night just to stay one step ahead of my students. I laminated every Glossary of Key Words term in pink fluro and stuck them across the back wall. I thought visible meant learned. It didn't. 22 years, thousands of HSC responses and five years as Supervisor of Marking later, I can see the mistakes I made clearly. Some of them cost my students marks. All of them taught me something. In this episode, I'm sharing the lessons I learnt the hard way so you don't have to. You'll learn: ✅ The common mistakes I made as a CAFS teacher and what I'd do instead ✅ How to build strong connections from Year 11 into Year 12 so students aren't starting from scratch ✅ The CAFS skills students need explicitly taught, not assumed ✅ How to make learning meaningful, purposeful and higher order, not just copying notes ✅ Why the Glossary of Key Words needs to be taught and modelled, not just displayed Whether you're in your first year of CAFS or your fifteenth, this one's for you. Take what works. Leave what doesn't. And know you're not doing this alone. 🎧 Listen now and let's make it happen. Ready for high quality resources, ongoing support and valuable feedback? Join The CAFS Collective 👉 thelearnnet.com/collective

Are we taking the fun out of PE and sport for Australian kids? This week on The PDHPE and CAFS Podcast, I'm joined by Olympic gold medallist Libby Trickett and Georgie Trickett, an everyday athlete, health professional and passionate advocate for inclusive sport. Together, they're the team behind Sportish and ambassadors for the Australian Sports Commission's Play Well Strategy, which is all about helping more Australians find their place in sport. We're diving into a conversation that I think every teacher, parent, coach, school leader and politician needs to hear. Have we become so focused on winning, competition and performance that we've forgotten the real purpose of PE and sport in the first place? Helping kids discover the joy of movement, build confidence, feel a sense of belonging and develop a lifelong love of being active. From primary school PE to secondary PE, we explore the challenges facing young people and the important role schools play in building positive relationships with movement. In this episode, we unpack: Why fun, inclusion and participation need to be at the heart of PE & sport. How we can create opportunities for every student, not just those who make the A team. Why fundamental movement skills and physical literacy are so important. What's contributing to teenagers dropping out of sport and how we can keep them engaged. How the Australian Sports Commission's Play Well Strategy is helping make sport more accessible. Why physical education deserves greater recognition and priority in Australian schools. Whether you're a primary teacher, PE teacher, school leader, parent, coach or politician, this episode will challenge you to rethink what success in PE and sport really looks like. PE and sport should be about so much more than competition and results. They're about giving every young person the opportunity to move, participate, build confidence, experience belonging and discover what their bodies are capable of. And if we truly value these experiences, we need to start giving physical education and sport the time, resources and priority they deserve in Australian schools. This is a conversation Australia needs to have. Hit play, challenge your thinking and share this episode with a teacher, parent, coach, school leader or decision-maker who can help make a difference. It's time to rethink how we value PE and sport, put participation and enjoyment back at the centre, and make movement a priority for every young Australian.

This week on The PDHPE and CAFS Podcast, Kelly Bell sits down with NSW educator Sarah Tompson, who was born in Papua New Guinea and adopted by an Australian family at three weeks old.

Victoria has had PE specialists in primary schools since the 1990s. NSW still runs a generalist model. So who is actually teaching K-6 PDHPE to our kids?

The ageing population content in Health and Movement Science has been reworked and most of us are teaching it with little more than the syllabus to work from. That makes it hard to give Health and Movement Science students anything concrete enough to build a strong response around.