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Head’s Update

25.04.2025

Every time I have been into Oak class this week, the children have asked me about a special delivery they have been expecting. They have managed to hide their disappointment at me arriving empty-handed fairly well, but it is fair to say they were thrilled that today when I was finally able to take them a parcel.

This has prompted me to tell you all about a different approach to help the children develop their reading skills that we have been working on over the last year. This sits alongside the excellent work the staff do with Read, Write, Inc and guided reading, and the great work parents do at home to support us too. It is based on the  ‘Just Reading’ trial led by the University of Sussex, initially for secondary students, which showed the children involved in the trial made rapid progress with their reading, with the results being most striking amongst the children whose reading levels were lower than average at the start of the trial.

Every day, time is set aside and the class teacher reads aloud to the children from a book that is ideally at a level above the ability of the best reader in the class. The children have a copy of the book between two and follow along as the story is read aloud. Each session begins with the teacher introducing 3-5 key pieces of vocabulary that the children will need to understand that part of the story, and one or two children giving a brief recap of the story so far. During the reading, the focus across the whole class on the story unfolding is magical.

Oak and Maple classes were our first participants, and remain very firm cheerleaders for the project. From this week, all classes from Year 1 to Year 4 are now taking part. In Years 1 and 2, ‘Just Reading’ is a daily activity, and for the children in Years 3 and 4 the classes alternate ‘Just Reading’ with their guided reading sessions each half term. Finding the right books can sometimes be a challenge (especially as we want to find a book the children haven’t come across before) and we are really grateful to Hunting Raven for their support in sourcing great stories with us. I think it is fair to say that the approach is thoroughly enriching the children’s reading experiences in school and the adults love it every bit as much as the children!

04.04.2025

I have to start this week with a huge thank you to FOTFS for organising such a brilliant Easter event last Saturday, we are so lucky to have such a dedicated team. The puzzles the children had to solve to earn their Easter egg were great fun and really engaged children (and grown-ups?!) of all ages. It was lovely to see so many families coming along to support the event. I love being able to open up the school to welcome our whole community in, and I know the children always enjoy an extra opportunity to play on the trim trail as well! We are looking forward to taking delivery of a reading shed to go on the main playground (hopefully during the holiday or very soon after), which is being funded by FOTFS. Over the last few years, FOTFS fundraising has really had a fantastic impact on the play opportunities the children have, with the new trim trail, the climbing wall and now the reading shed. The children are very fortunate to have lots of different ways to enjoy their playtimes.

We had a beautiful Easter service on Tuesday morning this week at Holy Trinity church. Mr Reid talked to the children about the concept of giving something up, and explained really clearly to the children why Easter is so important to Christians. Children from year 2 upwards also had parts to play in sharing details of the Easter story, talking beautifully clearly as they explained the various events and different emotions. The church provides wonderful acoustics for music, and the whole school singing sounded amazing. I have to make a special mention of the Year 4 children, who were amazing during one of our songs. The chorus was sung in two parts and the Year 4 children sang their part brilliantly, with impeccable timing – without an adult nearby to lead them.

As we break up today for our Easter holiday, I would like to wish all our families a very happy Easter. I hope you are able to enjoy some quality family time with your children, although I know school holidays bring with them different pressures to the school run. It looks as if the weather is set fair for the first part of the holiday at least, so hopefully that will mean lots of opportunities to get out and about without needing activities that cost lots of money. Later in the newsletter this week, you will find a list of places where children can eat either for free or for a very reduced rate. Hopefully that will be helpful to parents and grandparents over the next couple of weeks. We will be welcoming the children back on Tuesday 22nd April.

 

28.03.2025

It has been lovely to see so many parents coming in this week to meet with their child’s class teacher. Thank you for your patience with the booking process this time. We hope our new management information system will enable parents to book directly next time, but unfortunately the timing of the switch to the new system made it impossible this time. Although brief, these meetings are a really important part of the partnership between home and school, and are a great opportunity for information sharing on both sides at a time that can hopefully be a little less pressured, and public, than the beginning or end of the school day so I hope you have found them useful. If you haven’t been able to make an appointment, please do get in touch with your child’s class teacher to arrange a suitable time.

Thank you all for your support for the Big Walk and Wheel Challenge this week. It has been great to see how many active journeys the children have made. The challenge continues next week, so do please keep up the good work! We are lucky to have Frome Town Council providing events to support the challenge. It was such fun to have the Mojo Moves walking bus on Tuesday morning and great to see it so well supported. Watching the bus grow as we made our way to school and families joined in was lovely. Dr Bike was with us yesterday, giving the opportunity for checks and minor repairs to the children’s bikes. On Monday the children in Years 2, 3 and 4 will have the chance to use pedal power to make a smoothie when the smoothie bike will be at school for the morning. It will be returning after the Easter break for the younger children to have a go.

Across the school we have been very active in other ways this week. Year 2 have been to Frome library, they have taken part in a golf festival and they have had archery workshops this week too. Several children in Year 4 were involved in a Frome swimming gala on Thursday afternoon, and Wednesday afternoon saw two year 4 teams take part in the Clive Lewis tag rugby tournament. As always, the children represented our school brilliantly and were a real pleasure to take out of school.

20.03.2025

This week the teachers have had some training as they have all had the chance to meet with an education specialist and talk through their plans for the subject area they take the lead on. Primary teachers are very often not specialists in any one curriculum area (but they are absolutely brilliant at managing the varied needs of a class of small children!) and teachers take responsibility for a particular subject and lead on that across the school, offering a point of contact and support for their colleagues. In order to make sure our curriculum remains the best it can be, it is important that we give the teachers time and expertise to develop their roles as subject leads. So with that in mind, each teacher had an individual meeting to discuss where they currently are with their subject and to make sure their plans for the future of their subject will enable continued progress. It also meant I had some time in classes this week with the children, which is always lovely.

In my assembly with the children in Year 1 and Year 2, I talked to them about the Big Walk and Wheel Challenge coming up next week and the week after. Following on from our work last week on ‘Change Sings’, the children are very keen to do what they can to make a positive change. Schools across the country will be taking part in the challenge and the children were very excited to think they could be part of bringing about a nationwide change. It will be amazing if parents and grandparents can support the children to walk, scoot or cycle to school as much as possible over the next couple of weeks. It doesn’t have to be the whole of your normal journey to school, even parking a little further away than you would usually do and walking a little bit further helps, and counts.

To help us, Frome Town Council have organised three great activities to take place during the fortnight. Firstly, next Tuesday morning we can meet up with Mojo Moves at the bandstand in Victoria Park for music, fun and laughter as we make our way to school. Next Thursday, Dr Bike will be here all day ready and willing to check the children’s bikes. If you would like your child’s bike checked (minor repairs can also be carried out) all you need to do is make sure it is in school on Thursday morning. If your child rides their bike but you don’t want it to be checked, just leave it in the bike rack as normal. Finally, on Monday March 31st the smoothie bike will be here and the older children will have the chance to use their pedal power to make a smoothie. Hopefully a fun and active couple of weeks coming up!

14.03.2025

This week started with a wonderful visit for our children in Years 1 and 2. Author and illustrator Emma Carlisle came to share her most recent book, A Home is a Nest, with the children. Emma talked to the children about her childhood and her journey to becoming an author and illustrator. She also read her story to the children and then showed the children how she draws some of the animals she loves to include in her books. The children had taken their sketchbooks in with them, and Emma was delighted to see children with sketchbooks and actively encouraged to experiment with their artwork. Trinity is the first school Emma has visited where the children came to her workshop with sketchbooks. The children loved Emma’s visit and I am sure she has inspired lots of them to draw and write.

Across the school we have all been working on the same book this week, Change Sings by Amanda Gorman and Loren Long. Amanda Gorman shot to international fame when she presented her poem ‘The Hill we Climb’ at Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021. Change Sings is equally full of optimism, and is very much aimed at children and designed to inspire children to believe that they can be instrumental in making a better world. All of the children have used the book for their literacy lessons this week, and their work has combined English with social, moral, spiritual and cultural themes. The illustrations in the book are bold and bright and all the classes have created beautiful artwork inspired by them. We will be putting examples of the work the children have created this week on display in the hall, and parents will be able to see it when you come in to the Share my Work sessions after the Easter break.

07.03.2025

This week has been a challenging one for many of the children as we have been carrying out termly assessments – not that our younger children know them as such. Variously, they might be referred to as special work or booklets or important tasks. However, the children do know that the style of working when completing these tasks is different, but the teachers do a brilliant job of making sure everything is as low-key as possible, and ensure that other aspects of their week are much more relaxed. Having World Book Day this week has also meant that all of the classes have had the opportunity to have a trip out of school this week to Hunting Raven to select their special books. Our huge thanks to Tina and her brilliant team for making us feel so welcome at the shop. Much of yesterday was spent enjoying and celebrating our favourite books, with the children having chances to talk about them and share them with their friends – and hopefully encouraging each other to keep on reading in the process! Thank you so much to all the parents and grandparents who have come into school to read to the children this week. We also welcomed some visitors from Gooding Accountants yesterday morning, who came to read to the children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. The children have loved their visitors and have enjoyed hearing different people reading to them. We hope our visitors enjoyed the experience too!

This morning we had more visitors, Alison and Rosemary from the Frome Kindness Festival (https://www.thegoodheart.uk/festival),running from March 15th – 22nd. Alison and Rosemary came to talk to the children in our assembly this morning, explaining to the children the theme of the festival and promoting some of the child-friendly events that will be happening. It was lovely to see that many of our children already knew all about the festival and some are already planning to be involved. Our visitors talked to the children about seeing kindness as a superpower and caused great excitement when they appeared in the hall in their capes. As Comic Relief coincides with the Kindness Festival, we would love to combine the two and so are inviting the children to wear a cape to school on Friday 21st March, on top of their normal uniform and with a red nose if they would like to. Although Trinity children are already brilliant at being kind, as it is one of our school values we like to make the most of all opportunities to promote it.

28.02.2025

It has been lovely to see everyone again this week following the half term break. I hope everyone was able to enjoy something about last week, even if it was just not having to do the school run every morning! In school we have been enjoying the brighter weather this week, with more outdoor activity opportunities, including the children at after school club being able to have an outside play for the first time in quite a while. It makes such a difference for the children to be able to go out and have fun during their play times in the sunshine throughout the school day. The weather for the next few days seems pretty settled, so hopefully lots of families will be out and about to enjoy the Winter Wanderland. The children in Chestnut, Beech, Sunshine and Rainbow classes have all been really busy this week making their beautiful window displays so do wander past school and have a look when they are all lit up if you can.

Over the next few weeks we have some really lovely things coming up. Next Thursday is World Book Day, and we are making our focus all about our favourite books. We are really hoping that every child will be able to share their favourite book with their friends in class, and we know we have several parents and grandparents already signed up to come and read to the children across the week. If you would like to do this, it isn’t too late to volunteer – just get in touch with your child’s class teacher. All of the children will also be visiting Hunting Raven to choose a book that they will be able to ‘buy’ with their World Book Day token. This will be the third year we have done this, and I love being able to offer this opportunity to the children. We are extremely lucky to have such a supportive bookshop in Frome. Following World Book Day, we will be having a whole school shared story to focus on, which will also link with the Frome Kindness Festival running in March.

At the end of this term we will be taking part in the Big Walk and Wheel Challenge to try and encourage as much active travel to school as possible. We really hope our families will support us with this. You will find more information in the newsletter about some fun events Frome Town Council are putting on to help us celebrate the challenge.

A busy few weeks ahead!

14.02.2025

The highlight of my week this week has to be Tuesday morning, which I spent visiting all of the classes and seeing the children engaged in their work and play. I was joined by an education consultant we have worked with at Trinity over a number of years, and our learning walk was following on from the staff training we had with the consultant in January, looking at ways we can encourage greater retention of learning.

In every class we saw children fully engaged in their tasks and we were pleased to see many of the strategies we had looked at on our training day being used. We saw a mixture of maths and English across the school and found children in all classes who could talk to us confidently about their learning. In some classes, the work was quite individual, for instance Year 4 children planning their own versions of a story they have been working on using fronted adverbials to add description and interest to their writing. In other classes, there was more of a collaborative approach, with children in Year 3 discussing which their best sentences were to be used in a shared, whole class piece of writing.

We saw children who were finding their learning hard, but who were also enjoying the challenge of that learning and demonstrating resilience, one of our school values. Everywhere we went, we saw adults and children really focused on learning and completely purposeful in what they were doing. It is always such a pleasure to see the school in action and I really wish it could be practical to share that with you as parents.

I hope you all have an enjoyable week next week and are able to have some quality time together as families. I know the holidays can be tricky to manage, especially for working parents, but I also know the children have worked hard this term and deserve a bit of a break for all their efforts.

07.02.2025

It has been a busy week, and Tuesday was an especially exciting day for so many of our children. This term the children in Oak and Maple classes have been learning about the Titanic as part of their overall topic of Under the Sea. The children have absolutely loved finding out about Titanic and were very excited to come to school dressed as someone who might have travelled on the ship. We had captains and crew members, 1st and 3rd class passengers and even some dogs, rats and mice. The children’s costumes looked amazing, and they loved having their photos taken using the green screen, making it appear as if they were on the ship itself. During the day, they had afternoon tea (hot chocolate!) using fine china cups and saucers and created their own boarding passes to enable them to ‘sail’. They have learned so much about Titanic and amazed us with their enthusiasm. We are very grateful to the parents and grandparents who also worked hard to organise and create the wonderful costumes, and who have supported the children in their learning at home as well.

Tuesday was also the day that our children in Years 3 and 4 had a lovely trip out of school. We were invited to attend the dress rehearsal of Frome College’s performance of Alice in Wonderland at the Merlin theatre. The children walked to the theatre and thoroughly enjoyed the show. We love being able to give the children the experience of watching the pantomime at Christmas with a theatre company that comes to us, but it was amazing to be able to give the children the opportunity to watch a live show in a theatre, and to be able to do so at no cost to parents or school. The staff who attended with the children were really impressed with the quality of the performance and were also delighted to see some former Trinity students shining on the stage too!

And if the things going on within the school day weren’t exciting enough, there are also the school discos! Last Friday EYFS and Years 3 and 4 had a brilliant time at their discos and I am sure that the children in Years 1 and 2 will love theirs just as much this evening. Thank you so much to the FOTFS committee for all their wonderful organising, and to all the parent volunteers who come along and help out at the events. We are so lucky to have people willing to give up their time to organise and run fantastic community events for children and families.

31.01.2025

Over the last couple of weeks the children in Year 2 and Year 3 have had the opportunity to present some of their current and recent learning to other classes during our Stars assemblies. In addition to showing their work to parents and grandparents at the Share my Work sessions, this gives the children another chance to consolidate their learning as they explain to others what they have done. Presenting in front of the other children also helps the children to build their confidence in speaking in public. It is also a reason to take a little bit of time out of the busy school day to celebrate what the children have achieved and how hard they work!

In Year 3, the children have shared their work in Literacy, maths, science, geography and Design Technology. We have heard the opening paragraphs of some of the children’s own versions of The Tear Thief, a book they have been working on in Literacy, which have demonstrated some excellent use of descriptive language as they seek to set the scene for their story to come. We have had some live demonstrations of multiplication and division, as well as some carefully choreographed examples of forces. The children are clearly loving their geography work on the extremes of the weather, and talked us through the Mercalli scale for measuring the intensity of an earthquake. Knowing that I was in an earthquake many years ago, the children were curious to know where on the scale it was….for the record, I think it was a 7!

Our Year 2 children have been thoroughly enjoying their ‘Under the Sea’ topic. They have loved using the book Pirate Stew to help them develop their skills in writing recipes and using ‘bossy’ verbs, and Maple class shared their class recipe with us this morning. There was a remarkable number of children who thought they would like to try the stew, in spite of the rather long list of beautifully described, gruesome sounding ingredients! Last week, the children in Oak class shared their fascinating facts about the Titanic. Having been challenged by Miss Rutt to come up with something Miss Morris (our Titanic expert) did not already know, the children excelled themselves and were able to share some brilliant information. Miss Morris declared she had not known that 22 tonnes of soap were used to support the launching of the ship, and Oak class were satisfied they had achieved their mission!

24.01.2025

This week it has been a real pleasure to see so many parents (and some grandparents) coming in to see their children’s work. Most mornings the hall has been full, with children proudly showing off what they have been up to at school since September. I absolutely love being able to invite parents into school and I am so pleased that so many of you make the time to come in. Giving the children opportunities to look through their books and to talk to you about the things that they have been doing helps to keep the learning in their memories, as well as giving them the chance for some extra praise! Next week we will be welcoming parents from Pine, Willow and Hazel classes; and then we will be repeating the Share my Work sessions after the Easter break.

For our children in Reception, we organise things differently. This is partly because so much of the children’s learning throughout Reception is practical, and most of it is play-based and very much ‘in the moment’. We also find that the change to the morning routine is unsettling for our youngest children, and saying goodbye to mum or dad after a shared activity can be tricky. So, instead of the Share my Work sessions, the Reception staff organise shared activity sessions for parents to come along towards the end of the day to join in with a craft activity with the children. Again, we aim to run these twice a year, often linking with Christmas and Easter. The children love welcoming their grown ups into their class, and having you work alongside them.

We feel these sessions are both positive for the children and manageable (and hopefully enjoyable and informative too!) for parents, but do please feel free to let us know if you feel we can improve them in any way.

17.01.2025

Over the last couple of weeks I have been talking to the children in assemblies about our school vision. As a church school, we are expected to have a theologically rooted vision. Alongside this, as a school that is deeply committed to serving the whole of our school community, valuing the culture, beliefs, approach and background of every individual, we feel it is important that our vision reflects this. With this in mind, we decided upon the following as our vision for Trinity:

‘We encourage one another and build each other up.’

For those of you who are interested in the Bible reference, this comes from 1 Thessalonians 5:11, and is from a letter that Paul wrote to the people of the church community he had established in the Greek city of Thessalonica. Thessalonica was a very diverse city and when Paul moved away to continue his work spreading the word of Jesus, the various groups began to favour their own interests and the harmony that had been created came under threat. This prompted Paul to write to them to encourage them to support each other and to value their differences. While the Bible story is not the most child-friendly (meaning we take great care in how and what we share from it with the children), we felt the sentiment fitted perfectly what we want to achieve with the children during their time at Trinity.

The message we really want the children to take away from our vision is that we are a team at Trinity, we know that our differences make us stronger and better and that everyone has an important part to play. The vision links beautifully with our core values (curiosity, kindness, resilience, respect and teamwork), which the children know and demonstrate so incredibly well on a daily basis. We already see plenty of examples of how we live out our vision, children and adults alike, and I am sure this is only going to get even better in time.

10.01.2025

Happy New Year! I really hope all of our Trinity families were able to enjoy the Christmas break. It has been lovely to see the children back in school and ready to learn this week. The weather has provided a bit of a challenge for us all, but happily we have been able to open and operate as normal all week, with only the slightest adjustment to playtimes to ensure everyone could go outside and be safe. One of the joys of working with children is their excitement about weather conditions like the ones we have had this week – it really helps me to keep my grumpiness about the potential disruption in check! I was also very touched and grateful to see one of our neighbours (and a former parent) gritting the path before school yesterday morning. It is so nice to know we are looked after by our wider community.

On Monday morning, the teachers and teaching assistants had a very engaging training session with an external consultant. The focus of the session was memory and how we can support and encourage the children to retain their learning well. The session was a great mix of theory and practice, and as always with this consultant, the staff all came away with good ideas for things they can try out to improve our provision for the children, helping them to learn better and remember more.

There was also something that you can help with at home! One aspect of our memory is autobiographical memory, which is made up of personal facts about us and our families, things like birthdays, schools, jobs and significant events. The more that children know of these kinds of details, the easier it is for them to make logical links with other aspects of their learning because they can make associations. This could be something like being able to work out the time period in history that something happened (one of the staff was able to guess accurately the year Winston Churchill was born because she knew how old she was when he died) or having an understanding of the kinds of plants and animals that are native to this country because they have experience of seeing them on country walks. The more knowledge we have, the more we are able to make connections and children of First school age are in their prime in terms of brain development and capacity so the more experiences and knowledge we can give them at this stage, the better.