Sports at Cottesmore 

At Cottesmore, our aim is to get as many children as possible involved and participating in sport. We hope to do this by making sport as fun as possible. We have a P.E specialist that teaches outdoor games and a sports coach that teaches gymnastics and dance. Each child within the school takes part in at least two hours of physical activity each week. In the P.E lessons that are delivered, we cover a range of team and invasion games including football, tag rugby, basketball, netball and hockey. Children learn all skills and techniques needed within these sports such as dribbling, turning, passing, tackling and shooting. Once all aspects have been covered, we then challenge the children to apply these skills in game situations through Intra-school competitions and assess their ability and progression within that particular sport. In every one of these sports, we encourage the children to try their best and show great leadership qualities that are needed to succeed. Children develop great team work skills and learn about fair play and respect. We also cover striking and fielding within P.E lessons through cricket and rounders, in addition to net and wall games such as tennis.

During the summer term we have a huge focus on athletics, covering track and field activities. This is all in build up to our sports day competition at the end of the school calendar year. At this event all children take part in a running, throwing, jumping and relay event, competing against each other for team and individual awards, in a fun and competitive manner. We have also introduced sports day records for Key Stage 2, back in 2015, allowing the children to strive to be the best that they can be and challenge themselves to set a new Cottesmore record.

Children also get an opportunity to participate in swimming lessons throughout KS2. We take classes to King Alfred swimming centre and children are coached by qualified swimming instructors through a range of strokes. These lessons also include water confidence and safety techniques.

We offer a wide range of after school clubs at Cottesmore to help improve the children’s knowledge and skill of particular sports. Girls football, athletics and team football training clubs are run on a weekly basis by our P.E specialist. We also have a dance club that is run by our sports coach. We also have outside agencies that come in to offer further coaching in certain subject areas. These include RMA mixed football sessions for KS1 and KS2 and South Coast Elite basketball for Years 2-6.

We have been hugely successful in a number of inter-school competitions over the past few years. At Cottesmore, we try to enter every competition that we can to enable our pupils to strive to be successful in the sports that they love. We always hold trials before competitions take place in order to make sure that all children get a fair chance to show their ability and dedication. We also enter many festivals that give an opportunity for our children to try new sports and compete with other schools in more of a friendly manner. In the weeks running up to events, the chosen pupils will then attend practice sessions with our P.E specialist, to prepare and ready themselves for the competition. All of this practice is proving to be successful as recent results show. Please check out our sporting achievement page and sports newsletters for more information.

There has been a huge focus on intra-school competition within Cottesmore over the past few years, as the children love the chance to compete against each other, showing off all of the skills learnt during P.E lessons. At the end of most half terms, we set up a tournament style format for the children to compete against each other in KS2. Each child has a chance to win medals and certificates, both individually and as a team, in a fun yet competitive manner. We often celebrate worldwide events to help engage our children in different sports. Previous years have seen us celebrating the 2015 rugby world cup by setting up our own tag rugby competition, with the children competing over a 5 week period. We have also celebrated the mens Euro 2016 with an intra-school football competition, followed by the Rio Olympics 2016 celebration in the summer term which included an intra school hockey competition as well as an athletics event. Other major sporting events celebrated have included the 2017 NBA basketball lunch time championships, the 2018 English Premier League lunch time football championships, the 2018 football mens World Cup, the 2020 Olympics and the womens Euros 2022.

At Cottesmore, we often run charity fundraising events, using sport as a tool raise money for various charities. We use sport relief as a way of fundraising every two years, usually with a fun run around our field. The children dress up and have a fun day whilst also raising a lot of money for charity. We have also raised money for CAFOD as well as Cancer Research through fun sporting activities such as penalty shootouts vs teacher.

Over the past few years we have created strong links with local secondary schools and colleges that have allowed us to use their facilities, whilst also coaching our children as part of their sports leader programmes. Students from these schools have also often helped with whole school sports events such as sports day, charity fundraisers and world sports celebration days.

We hope to encourage as many children to engage in physical activity as possible, and will continue to offer opportunities for children to try a wide variety of sports.

Sports Leaders

Sports Leaders are a group of children that show great enthusiasm and dedication in all aspects of sport. Their challenge is to develop sport within our school and inspire as many children as possible to engage in physical activity through fun, friendly and competitive competitions.
Sports leader meetings are held weekly with Mr. Buggy, to discuss activities that are being held within school that week. This is also an opportunity for the children to voice their opinions on school sport and create new ideas to encourage more children to engage in physical activity.

Cottesmore Tag Rugby World Cup

Sports leaders were given the task to get as many friends as possible to sign up to our very own Rugby World Cup! We then fairly chose the teams, drawing them out of a hat and organising regular, weekly fixtures as part of our Intra-School competition. Sports leaders helped with officiating and recording results.

Sport Relief Celebration

Sports leaders came up with the idea of organising a charity event for the whole school to take part in and raise money for a good cause. We decided to choose Sport Relief as a charity we could raise money for and we also wanted to make a donation to our school catholic charity that we support. Firstly children had a Try-Athlon event to try and earn as many points as possible for themselves. Children took part in different events that were run by the sports leaders and their results were recorded. To finish off our Sport Relief celebration, the whole school took part in a 1 mile fun run around our field. Each child was given the opportunity to dress up as their sporting hero and asked to kindly donate £1 to Sport Relief. Prizes were awarded to the best dressed children and these were chosen by our sports leaders. We also came up with the idea of having a main prize draw for anyone that could raise £5 or over. This proved to be hugely popular and enabled us as a school to raise close to £3000!

Olympic and Paralympic Celebration

Our school were keen to celebrate the Olympic and Paralympic games with a whole school celebration. Sports leaders decided to plan an Olympic week with lots of fun activities linked to the Olympic and Paralympic games. Children were divided up fairly and given an Olympic country to represent throughout this week. They could earn points from different challenges and these would be totalled up at the end of our celebration! To start our Olympic week, classes were asked to design Olympic flags and banners within their classes. During this day, each class was given 30 minutes to come and play Paralympic games with sports leaders. Children had a go at Boccia, Goal ball, Seated Volleyball and Guided athletics. All of these games are events at the Paralympics and our children got the chance to have a go! On Tuesday the children took part in our annual school sports day. On Thursday the children competed in Olympic events, with more opportunities to gain points for their countries. Finally at the end of the week, children travelled all around the world, going to different classrooms and having a go at various activities linked to many Olympic countries. We celebrated France by building the Eifel tower and learning about French cuisine (mainly snails)! Greece by learning about how the Olympic Games first started. Italy by building famous landmarks including the Colosseum and the leaning tower of Pisa. USA by learning all about line dancing. Australia by having a go at aboriginal dot paintings and Brazil by making carnival masks and having a go at samba dancing!

Cottesmore Euros

Following on from the success of our very own Tag Rugby World Cup, sports leaders were keen to promote our very own Euros football competition. This event would run at the same time as the professional event in France, with teams playing weekly fixtures at lunch time. Sports leaders helped with organising teams, fixtures and helping to officiate this event.

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