David Lloyd

The children take part in a series of ‘jigsaw piece’ activities that when put together give them the skills to be a competent, confident and safe swimmer with the skill base in place to develop technique in a wide range of water based sports and lifelong swimming opportunities.

It is designed to encourage the children to acquire their swimming skills through fun and games. The build up of ‘jigsaw’ skills will ultimately lead to the children being able to deliver their competent stroke skills:

Front Crawl	Backstroke
Breaststroke	Butterfly

These skills may also give the child the opportunity to transfer the skills into other water or land based sports such as:

Water Polo

Gymnastics

Netball

Confidence in the water starts with the FOUNDATION programme, for pre school babies and children and develops water confidence with parents and guardians. The emphasis is focused on very basic motor skills and the introduction to water through play and games. These programmes are in place to ensure that small children have basic confidence skills in the water which prepares them for the elements of the national plan stages that take them through their learn to swim journey.

Children develop their basic movement range during the ages of 5 - 8 years for girls and 6 - 9 years for boys, during this time children should take part in activity that will help them build their FUNdamental movement skills.

When learning to swim the children focus on the following water specific FUNdamental skills as part of their journey through the ASA National Plan for Teaching Swimming and are categorised as follows:

ENTRY	Safe entry into water, use of steps, side and jumps.
EXITS	Safe exits from water, use of steps and side.
ROTATION AND ORIENTATION	Developing skills such as: how to turn around, how to lie back, how to lie forward, how to regain an upright position, and how to twist from the back to the front and vice versa.
STREAMLINING	Understanding of streamlining, how to be streamlined and why it is important.
BUOYANCY AND BALANCE	Developing an understanding of buoyancy and balance and what affects it, and how to become buoyant in the water.
AQUATIC BREATHING	Developing confidence in the water and a feeling of being at ease with the water around the face, learning how to breathe correctly.
TRAVEL AND COORDINATION	Developing movement forwards, backwards and sideways, how to travel effectively, exploring different ways of travelling in water.

The children are required to achieve all of the elements for each stage of the swimming plan before they can progress to the next stage. Our swimming coaches will assess the children at the end of each term and at this stage the progress of your child will be assessed and recommendations for their progression through the plan will be made, it will not always be the case that your child will move from one stage to the next every term and will be dependent on their individual progress. Your coach will be able to answer any questions you may have on their progress.

We are very proud to be teaching children to swim and should you require any further information regarding the national plan please do speak with your swim coach.

FOUNDATION	A programme to develop early years water confidence, parent and child classes for pre school children developing very basic confidence and motor skills through play.
STAGE 1	Developing basic safety awareness, the 'class' scenario, basic movement skills and water confidence skills. Swimmers may use aids, e.g. arm bands, floats etc.
STAGE 2	Developing safe entries to the water, including jumping, basic floating, travel and rotation unaided to regain upright positions. Swimmers may use aids, e.g. arm bands, floats etc.
STAGE 3	Developing safe entries including submersion, travel up to 10 metres on the front and back, progress rotation skills and water safety knowledge.
STAGE 4	Developing understanding of buoyancy through a range of skills, refining kicking technique for all strokes, and swimming 10 metres to a given standard.
STAGE 5	Developing 'watermanship' through sculling and treading water skills, and complete rotation. Performing all strokes to the standard as directed.
STAGE 6	Developing effective swimming skills including coordinated breathing; developing the water safety aspects and understanding of preparation for exercise.
STAGE 7	Developing a quality stroke technique up to 100 metres, incorporating skills learnt and combining them to develop a linked routine and complete successfully an obstacle course that combines a variety of skills accomplished throughout Stages 1-7.

FUNdamental Sports Skills

When your child has completed the FUNdamental movement skills programmes, the journey and choices for developing water skills continues with the FUNdamental Sports Skills programmes, the programmes available in this section will differ from club to club dependant on each club’s pool facilities.

The chart shows how children can use our swim coaching programme at David Lloyd during their learning journey and beyond to support their future healthy lifestyles.