Students in Year 6-8 have dived into their six-week swimming programme this semester. Lessons will cover all aspects of swimming – including perfecting technique and setting time goals. We discuss swimming at Yew Chung International School of Beijing with P.E. teacher Mr Matt McEwan.

Please introduce the swimming programme

There are lots of ways that students at YCIS Beijing can get involved with swimming. We partner with the Firepower International Swimming Club across the road to offer daily swimming classes after school and at weekends. They cater for a range of abilities there and also coach our YCIS Beijing Swimming Team.

In addition to these co-curricular swimming activities, the coaches at Firepower coach our curriculum swimming. For the first six weeks of this semester, students in Years 6, 7 and 8 receive a double period of swimming every week.

How does this complement our P.E. curriculum?

A well-rounded P.E. curriculum should provide students with the groundwork for all of the main sport groups. This includes divided court and net games, invasion games, aesthetic activities (e.g. dance), strike and field and aquatics. Our swimming programme ensures that our students are receiving training in all key areas.

Swimming is particularly useful for teaching self-motivation and target-setting. We work with students on developing these skills which are readily applicable to other areas of life too.

Finally, in teaching our students a variety of sports, it gives them more opportunity to find something that they will love.

How do we teach swimming?

Lessons are led by the Firepower coaches. They have a team of qualified coaches, some with national competition, coaching and refereeing experience.

In lessons, students learn to perfect front crawl, backstroke and breaststroke and move onto butterfly in the more advanced stages. We also develop timed swimming skills.

How do we cope with different ability levels?

Students come to swimming with different amounts of experience. So unlike other sports, swimming is only graded on participation and attitude – not ability. This means that all students can feel encouraged and achieve great grades.

Firepower also have additional coaches on hand to assist with lessons where the ability is very mixed. That way, all students can receive quality personal coaching.

Why are swimming lessons important?

Being able to swim and, better still, being a strong swimmer can save your life. Aside from personal safety, it’s a great social skill for life – meaning you can enjoy sea swimming on holiday!

For students who really excel in swimming, they can take it as a sport for IGCSE P.E. so we are glad to lay the groundwork from Year 6. In addition, it’s a great sport for fitness and one which many people wish to continue throughout life!