Sport @ Westlea

Here at Westlea Primary School we have a real talent for sport. We regularly take part in competitions and events in football, netball, basketball and many more sports.

Over the year, we will keep you updated with our efforts and successes via our weekly school newsletter.

Basketball

We have a huge pool of basketball talent in school with basketball hoops on the school yard and in the sports hall. We have sports partnership basketball support and run an after school club to develop our skills. We take part in a year 5/6 tournament and a year 3 festival each year. We have strong links to East Durham Lions club and have hosted one of their team members who is an England basketball accredited referee to prepare for the tournament.

Football

Our football teams take part in the local schools leagues and we are fortunate enough to have enough keen players to have a mixed A and B team and a girls team. We also have annual visits to soccarena through the sports partnership for year 1, 2, 3 and 4. We host SAFC coaching sessions in school and have strong links with the foundation of light. We have our own marked pitch on the school field as well as a MUGA with artificial grass.

Girls Football

Westlea are proud to have a very well attended girls football training club and a well supported girls football team. Many of the girls also play for our mixed school team. This autumn’s tournament saw the team undefeated. Our girls football team promote the sport each year through a women in football day each year where they plan and coach their peers in school across the day.

Our Year 2 girls also take part in a disney inspired football skills day at East Durham College.

Swimming

Children in year 5 have take part in swimming lessons at a local pool each week. This has been an enjoyable and beneficial experience for all the children, and we can see huge improvements in every child. Once our year 5 pupils have met the national targets year 4 pupils begin to take up the lessons. We also have the opportunity to take part in the local swimming gala each year.

Cross country

We have children from year 2 all the way to year 6 taking part in the annual cross-country competition. The children always have an enjoyable experience, and all have a fantastic attitude. This has led to the school organising a running club which begins in the summer term and continues in the autumn up to the event.

Tag Rugby

Year 5 and 6 have been enjoying tag rugby in their PE lessons this autumn leading to a tag rugby competition. Due to the high interest from the children, we started a competition club on a Monday evening and managed to take 2 teams to the rugby competition. The children had an amazing time, worked well as a team and had some great results. The year 5 children can’t wait until next year.

NEW! NFL Flag Football

Westlea have been lucky enough to secure a place at the new Durham superbowl competition. Mr Unsworth has attended a training session on the sport so he can deliver NFL flag football in school. We will introduce NFL to the whole school in sports week.

Athletics Indoor and Outdoor

Our athletics teams attend an after school club in readiness for our competitions. We have returned to school with medals on a number of occasions this year from the indoor events and look forward to the outdoor competition in the summer. Events include track, relay and hurdles as well as long jump, howler throw, javelin and triple jump.

Netball

We have now established a very popular netball club in school and have enjoyed success recently getting through to the county level competition. We are lucky enough to have our own outdoor netball court on the school yard. We take part in a netball festival with our sports partnership as well as a SEN netball festival. We follow the BEE Netball scheme from England netball.

Health and Wellbeing Week

Health and Wellbeing Week in October is always huge success with each class taking part in activities. The week is launched with a wellbeing day where pupils enjoyed yoga and mindfulness, team building and fun fitness. Throughout the week we have a wide range of activities to keep us active and engaged. These vary year to year – we have held a skipping day, a golf day, a first aid skills day and enjoyed a zoom meeting with a professional footballer to talk about resilience as well as a visit from a track athlete and basketball coach. This year we have a new event – the cube – with active challenges for the body and mind.

Bikeability and Scooters

Bikeability officers from Durham County Council visit school to take pupils through the bikebaility level 1 and level 2 curriculum. We also have two members of early years staff trained on the bikeability balance bike scheme. we encourage walking or scooting to school with a scooter park on site.

Soft Archery

We love soft archery at Westlea! After a taster session from the sports partnership we purchased our own kit and run a club afterschool for those with a curiosity to learn a new sport.

Yoga

Yoga is a popular activity in school and is one of our attendopoly prizes linked to mindfulness. We enjoy yoga in school as part of our enrichment time and our wellbeing day.

Multiskills

One of our most popular clubs is multiskills where pupils get to same a range of sports and practice skills that are transferrable to so many different situations. Hockey, dodgeball, fencing, archery, benchball, team games…… the list is endless! We also attend a year 1 multiskills festival each year that is a lot of fun.

Little learners

For our youngest pupils we have little learners sports activities for reception. After some classroom based sessions on fine motor skills we play games and get active to practice our gross motor skills, this was supported by the sports partnership. To finish off the activities the year group visited a local soft play center to put those skills to good use.

Dance, music and movement

Developed from our choir, the younger pupils that attended asked for more dance and movement so we developed a club to do just that. Our key stage one pupils enjoy singing with the added freedom to express themselves through dance. Dance and mini discos are also prizes on our attendopoly board. We hold a dance day in school each year with different syles – will it be country? disco or street dance this year.

Sportability

After attending a fantastic sportability event hosted by the sports partnership aimed at SEND pupils we invited them into school to hold a whole day of sportability for every child in school to sample. This is now an annual event with the activities repeated in enrichment time and multiskills. One new sport it introduced to school was boccia, Westlea now has it’s own kits in school.

Tennis, table tennis and tru padel

We hold a whole school tennis day each summer term which is always very popular and compete in a multiple tennis tournaments each year. We have also introduced table tennis in school this year which has become a popular enrichment activity as well as pupils sampling tru padel.

Outdoor and Adventurous

Year two attend a special outdoors adventurous activity day each year and year 6 enjoy activities during their residential trip. We have had a lot of success with an orienteering activity with year 2 in the spring. Our school site has a mile track we use daily, a ninja trail, trim trail and tyre park. Westlea Woods provides a rich environment full of opportunities to get active.

Cricket

We are very successful at Westlea primary school with our mixed and girls cricket team topping the leaderboard at the recent tournaments. We have a number of pupils that represent the county for cricket. We hosted a chance to shine from durham county cricket club and look forward to them returning.

Fencing

We were able to gain fencing equipment and Mr Unsworth has now gained a qualification to coach us in school – we look forward to launching this once the kit arrived.