Do you know what my favorite part of the game is? The opportunity to play.

Mike Singletary

The difference that PE and sport make to the lives of our children is quite remarkable.

At our school we have a culture that encourages all children to be active and have a positive attitude to physical activity and equally a healthy lifestyle.  Children at West Bretton enjoy PE, sport and physical activity and we provide a whole range of opportunities for our children.  It is our aim for each child to find something they enjoy and can be successful in. We recognise that physical education is a unique and essential contributor to the development of the whole child - physical, academic, social, emotional and spiritual.

We endeavour to deliver an outstanding PE curriculum and offer a wide variety of activities both in and out of curriculum time.  Children learn that being active is fun and an essential part of a healthy lifestyle.  At the beginning of their school life children learn and explore basic movement skills, developing these skills over time as they progress each year.

We have a whole school plan that rotates every two years and this ensures total coverage of the National Curriculum. During Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 children experience dance, games, athletics, gymnastics and lessons through enjoyable and stimulating teaching. At Key Stage 2, in addition to those taught earlier, pupils go off site each week for swimming lessons. They also go on a residential which covers the adventurous activities part of the curriculum - showing them that being active and healthy is not only found indoors - a particular favourite activity from the residential is the piranha pool! At West Bretton we are lucky enough to have a large trim trail within our grounds - this is also used as part of our outdoor and adventurous PE sessions.

In gymnastics children use the large apparatus which enables them to develop their gross motor skills (climbing, jumping, balance etc). We also have a coach to teach specialist gymnastics. We play a wide variety of team games and take advantage of our playing field for outdoor activities of many kinds.  During the summer all children have athletics lessons and learn the fundamentals of running, jumping and throwing events and are fortunate enough to attend many athletics events at our local secondary school.

Local links with rugby and football teams ensures that our children have the best possible knowledge of what’s available to them in their local area. The Wakefield Wildcats rugby team will be coaching our children in the autumn term and also running a healthy, happy fun day for children and their families to attend.

In Wakefield we are renowned for our participation in local, regional and even national competitive sport, recently participating in the Yorkshire cricket finals.  Whilst we are not able to take every child to every competition we happily send as many teams as possible to events and tournaments and have made a commitment to ensure that every child at our school from Year 1 to Year 6 has the opportunity to represent our school as least once during each academic year, if they wish.  Sporting competitions and events we take part in each year include multi-skills, football, hockey, netball, cross country, rounders, cricket, athletics, minilympics, handball, rugby and many more. We believe in healthy competition, teaching the children to do their best and be gracious in victory and defeat.

At West Bretton our PE curriculum is enhanced by our playtime leaders and at lunchtime Mrs Swallow and other staff members lead PE activities in the playground and on the field for all children. We are also in the progress of training some of our older pupils to lead lunchtime games to ensure increased participation of sport is happening during lunchtimes. And with the addition of our new T3 ping-pong table we have abundant choice for children to choose from! We have a wide range of PE visits and trips, such as days at Leeds Stadium for the cricket finals, Robinwood activity days and residentials.  The children benefit from a wide variety of before and after school clubs, some of which are led by teachers, teaching assistants and coaches from local teams. These include football, athletics, gymnastics, hockey, dance, Zumba, team games, multiskills and more.