West Rainton, Houghton-le-Spring DH4 6RN
It was great to get back to showcasing our dance talents at the Primary Dance Festival at Durham’s Gala Theatre in April 2022.
A mixed-age group of 25 pupils performed a beautiful contemporary routine to ‘Speechless’ from Aladdin. Following that, our Y5/6 class performed an incredibly powerful routine to ‘Believer’ by Imagine Dragons. Both groups were outstanding!
We were so pleased to have one of our favourite performances back this year, when the whole school performed a traditional dragon dance to welcome in the Lunar New Year.
We had lots of parents and family members come to join us, and we were blessed with beautiful early spring sunshine too.
Well done to all of our pupils, but especially year 5 and 6 pupils, for displaying the dragon so brilliantly.
In autumn 2021, we were delighted to bring in our friends from the Gala Theatre, Durham to lead a ten-week after-school performing arts club for pupils in Y2-6 identified as having particular talents in this area.
Musical theatre is something we are very passionate about in West Rainton Primary School. Our Key Stage Two shows each Christmas are testament to the effort, energy and commitment we devote to giving every pupil this magical experience.
Within the professionally run club, our pupils have begun with vocal training and choreography to Hairspray’s ‘You Can’t Stop the Beat.’
They are sounding and looking FAB-U-LOUS!
We were delighted to get live theatre back in school recently. It means a lot to us that our children get to visit theatres, and it is something we’ve really missed over the past two years.
We kickstarted 2021 with a bang with M&M productions’ performance of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ which the children thoroughly enjoyed. The high-tech play involved a mix of live acting and cinematics.
This set us up nicely for our upcoming trip in December to the pantomime at Durham’s Gala Theatre.
Back by popular demand- another collaborative Nativity play between pupils from across all ages and residents of Springfield Lodge took place in St Mary’s Church just before breaking up for Christmas.
On the back of our community achieving national recognition as ‘dementia friendly community of the year’ at the recent Alzheimer’s Society event in London, this was an appropriately poignant way to end a wonderful year of working together.
It is one of the highlights of our Christmas season; the annual village carol service at St Mary’s Church.
This year, our choir sang ‘O Holy Night’ and our bellringing squad treated the community to a beautiful rendition of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’. What a wonderful way to celebrate Christmas with the community we love!
Pupils from Year 3 to 6 put on three fantastic performances of the school’s version of the West End musical hit, ‘We Will Rock You!’ Featuring 28 of Queen’s most-loved hits, our pupils brought the house down with amazing solos, great acting and superb dance routines.
Who will ever forget the Globalsoft Police routine to ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ or our troupe of hippies singing ‘These are the Days of our Lives’?
We hope you enjoyed the show as much as we did rehearsing and performing it. The pupils have all worked incredibly hard, largely in their own time, to put on such a professional production. Well done Key Stage Two!
Christmas at West Rainton Primary started with a real treat as our EYFS pupils put on a beautiful production of ‘Christmas Counts’, a Nativity play based all around numbers!
It was hard to believe that many of the performers were only three years old as they danced, sang and said their lines with such professionalism beyond their years.
This was followed up by a fantastic production of ‘A Miracle in Town’ by our pupils in Year 1 and 2. Our oldest infant pupils had to learn many lines and they told the Christmas story wonderfully.
Thank you to our audiences, of over 150 people, who supported our performers so well.
A Merry Christmas to you all!
As part of our preparations for Christmas performances in our local community, Y6 have been mastering two pieces of music on the handbells.
Their recent experience of composition on the keyboards meant they could transfer their knowledge of reading music with ease into another tuned instrument.
Keep an eye out for them at St Mary’s Church carol service and our own carols around the tree event in school.
Our Y6 and reception pupils are the very best of friends! This autumn, they worked together to perform a beautiful harvest assembly for parents, including a harvest ‘squiggle’ dance. They then went to local houses to deliver our harvest hampers filled with kind donations from our school community.
As a special treat for working so brilliantly together, the children then carved pumpkins together to decorate our spooky Hallowe’en disco.
