Newsletter

Newsletter 4 – 25^th
September 2020

Dear Parents

Creative Curriculum in action

Everyone in school enjoyed
the Falconry exhibition on Tuesday, with interesting presentations about birds
of prey and the chance to see some of these amazing birds in real life.

Sarum class had a virtual
museum experience of Bristol Museum to find out more about hieroglyphics, on
Monday afternoon, as part of their topic on Ancient Egyptians – another great
learning opportunity.

Stonehenge class had a
wonderful (rainy) walk to look at the different styles of houses in our village
and to explore the church briefly.

And White Horse class had
fun with racing pigeons! Our thanks to Mr Howse who brought them in and gave
the children a wonderful experience.

Harvest Celebration Hopefully
you will have seen the exhibition of Harvest pictures and bunting on our hedge
outside the school – a chance for you to see some of the amazing work our
children have done on the theme of Harvest.

Adventure Activity Day On Tuesday 29^th September and Wednesday 30^th
September, we will have the adventure activity days, with a climbing
wall, archery, rope swing and other team games. Please make sure your child is
wearing long, jogging type trousers, a long sleeved top and trainers, suitable
for the activities and in school colours if at all possible. No smart designer
clothes please. Sarum and Silbury class will have their turn on Tuesday, and
Stonehenge, White Horse and Avebury classes will have their turn on Wednesday.

PFA  Please consider joining the working
committee of our amazing Parents and Friends Association – it is a great way to
meet other people and make friends, and in addition you will be supporting our
school as we enrich the children’s education with donations from the PFA fundraising.
We
are going to need volunteers to step up to the leadership in the coming year,
so please do consider this so that we can keep the charity going. It is
such an important part of our school life and school community. Our huge thanks
go to Adrienne and her team who have done such a wonderful job over the past
year.

Christmas We are
determined that we will have some Christmas celebrations in our school no
matter how difficult it may be to organise. It will have to be very different
from previous years, as we cannot have all parents in the hall, nor can we have
all children mixed up together. But we hope to have some kind of a Christmas
performance with the older children, perhaps in the form of a radio play; we
would like to have a whole school musical event with different elements from
each class being stitched together to form a whole school performance; and we
hope our youngest children, at least, will be able to dress up and present some
kind of short, limited scale, outdoor performance for parents to enjoy. Our PFA
are already considering how to do a Christmas party – within classes, perhaps,
and with individual party bags. We will continue to update on these ideas as we
work out the logistics.

Staff Training Ensuring
that our staff always have access to high quality continuing professional
development has been more challenging in these times, but we continue to
provide the best we can. This week, we offered Speech and Language Therapy
training for all staff from all five of the Emmanuel Collaboration schools. The
training was streamed out from the Wiltshire Speech and Language Therapy team
into our schools via “Teams” so that we could all benefit in safety. The second
part of this course will go out in a fortnight. We are grateful to the SLT team
who have managed to deliver this training in this way and to our staff for
giving the time to their continuing professional development in the midst of
the challenges we face.

Sharing on Moodle Each
week there will a few items shared on the Whole School part of our Moodle
platform so that you can see some of the work our children are doing.

Links with our local church Please read the accompanying letter from St Peter’s church in Great
Cheverell – there are some super events coming up and we do encourage you to go
along and join in with the community celebrations.

Secondary School Applications  The secondary school application process is now underway for September
2021 entry. Parents can apply using the online system, which is available
through www.wiltshire.gov.uk
or by obtaining a paper application through the customer contact centre (call
01225 713010 and a copy will be sent out).

The deadline for applications
is midnight on the 31^st October 2020.

Upcoming Events (Calendar of events will be available on the website at www. holy-trinity.co.uk in the coming week)
Tuesday 29th and Wednesday 30th September	Adventure activity days on our school field.	School day. No payment, but request for donations. Sensible PE type clothing to be worn – long trousers.
Wednesday 21st October	Last day of term.
Monday 2nd November	Children back to school.
Wednesday 18th November	Feedback to parents on children’s current progress and attainment – written format.
Friday 18th December	Last day of term
Tuesday 5th January	Everyone back to school	(Monday 4th January is a TD day)

Best wishes

Mercedes Henning

We welcome and value your opinion. If you have
any comments or suggestions, please contact the Head teacher or Chair of
Governors.

PFA News

Due to personal
circumstances, Adrienne has regretfully decided to no longer continue as PFA
Chair. We are therefore on the lookout for someone to Chair the group and we
will consequently be holding an AGM in the coming weeks to establish if anyone
would like to. Sadly, without someone in this position, the charity cannot
legally function, and we would be required to at least temporarily shut the
PFA. If you have any interest in taking on this role, please do let the PFA
know. We will provide details in the near future for when the AGM will be, with
it being held in the open air by The Pavilion.

The PFA would like to take this
opportunity to say a big ‘thank you’ to Adrienne for stepping up to the role of
Chair this time last year. She did a marvellous job of steering us through the
many fun and busy activities we were running up until lockdown. We are very
pleased that she will remain part of the PFA team going forward. 

At the AGM we would
also usually provide a summary of activity for the last 12 months, plus what
the financial position is of the group. In light of Covid-19 and the
restrictions we find ourselves facing, this year we will instead be providing
this information by email. This will be available in the coming weeks. Please
email us if you wish to be added to the email list.

We are very much
hoping to be able to do Christmas cards and personalised Christmas gifts again
this year and we are currently looking at the best way to do this, so watch this
space over the next week or two. 

Many thanks

Your PFA

To contact the PFA:

Email: holytrinitypfa@gmail.com or
join our Facebook page: “Holy Trinity (Great Cheverell) PFA”

Read more...

Dear Parents

After
many happy years of leading Holy Trinity as headteacher, I shall be retiring in
August next year, and making way for a new leader who will take our wonderful
school forward and who will continue to embed and improve the amazing ethos and
achievements that make this school so unique. This will be an extraordinary
year, and a memorable year, for me to work as my last, and I shall make sure
that our children continue to get the very best education possible under the
unusual circumstances. Governors are in the process of recruiting my successor
and will keep parents informed so there will be regular updates on this matter.

Parent Governor We welcomeFrancesca
Shepherd onto our Governing Body from 15^th October as the new parent
governor. Our thanks go to Vincent Albano, the previous parent governor in this
post, whose skills and experience have been so much appreciated over the past
years and whose clear and concise approach has supported school development so
effectively.

The
role of our Governing Body is to map out the overarching strategy for our
school. They appoint the Headteacher, agree the budget with the Headteacher
each year, and hold the Headteacher to account for standards and financial
management in the school. Governors have no role in the day to day management
of the school, deployment of staff or minutiae of classroom management – all of
these matters are delegated in their entirety to the Headteacher (who is also,
in our school, the CEO of our single academy trust).

Moodle Everyone
should now be able to access Moodle, as the site has been set up for the new school
year with new classes.  My thanks, as
ever, to Patrick Williams who keeps this platform running so efficiently for us
on a voluntary basis. If your child is isolating or off sick, please ensure
that they carry on with their learning journey. The work you did over lock down
with your children was superb and we are very impressed with the standards our
children maintained through this time. We hope to be able to keep this up with
the partnership between school and home supporting the children’s best outcomes
through this difficult time. 

Field trips White
Horse class had a field trip around our village this week.  My thanks to Mrs Heath and Mrs Andrew who made
the field trip on “Great Cheverell during the First World War” come alive for
the children, by dressing up and telling stories. The children learnt a lot and
really enjoyed the trip.

Stonehenge class will also
have a trip to the local church in the coming weeks. They will become more
familiar with the building which is used by Christians for their worship and
some of the Christian symbols found there – interesting theological learning,
whether they are people of faith or not.

Sarum class are having a
virtual museum experience of Bristol Museum to find out more about
hieroglyphics, on Monday afternoon, as part of their topic on Ancient
Egyptians.

I am very grateful to our
amazing teachers who continue to find ways to bring our curriculum to life even
in these complicated times. Workload is much heavier for them at present, with
the distance learning to manage as well as the daily whole class teaching but
they do not let that stand in the way of ensuring that children are given the
best possible education under very difficult circumstances.

School Party A
little celebration was held, in class Bubbles on the field, on Tuesday, to
commend the children for the amazing efforts they made over lockdown to keep
their learning, resilience and joy intact through the difficult times. It was
lovely to have everyone on the field, in groups very distanced from each other,
enjoying their party bags, and playing a very unusual version of Pass the
Parcel. Thanks to Mrs Heath and Mrs Andrew for their cooking and baking and
making up the party bags. Busy week for them! There are photos of this, and
other learning events from this extraordinary term, on our website: https://holy-trinity.co.uk/photo-gallery/?album=1&gallery=35&show=slide

Falconry Exhibition We
are delighted to have this opportunity to find out more about birds of prey on
Tuesday next week. The exhibition and presentation to each class will take
place outside on the field, with all Covid precautions in place.

Harvest Celebration The
children in Stonehenge class are hoping to present a little Harvest song on Friday
25^th September at the end of their school day. Weather
permitting, they will stand on the playground/Sledge hill, hopefully visible to
parents on the outside of the school, and sing/say their song. There will also
be some Harvest pictures from the rest of the children attached to the hedge or
on display panels outside the school for parents to enjoy, instead of our usual
Harvest assembly.

We will not be collecting
for Harvest this year, as we are not allowed to manage contributions from
children’s homes, but please be aware of the desperate need of so many families
at this time, and please do contribute to the Devizes Foodbank if you can –
they have donation points at the front of Morrison’s and Sainsbury’s in
Devizes, or you can donate money https://devizesdistrict.foodbank.org.uk/give-help/
.

Tennis Holiday Camp will run
during half term daily 10am-3pm from Tuesday 27th-Thursday 29th October 2020. They are offering
an EARLY BIRD DEAL of £50 per child to anyone who books and pays by 30th
September 2020.

Full details, including how to book can be found at https://tinyurl.com/dtc-oct20camp

Upcoming Events (Calendar of events will be available on the website at www. holy-trinity.co.uk in the coming week)
Tuesday 22nd September	Falconry exhibition for all children, in Bubbles.	School day
Friday 25th September	Harvest celebration.	In classes, with some art work exhibited for parents outside the school.
Tuesday 29th and Wednesday 30th September	Adventure activity days on our school field.	School day. No payment, but request for donations.
Wednesday 21st October	Last day of term.
Monday 2nd November	Children back to school.
Wednesday 18th November	Feedback to parents on children’s current progress and attainment – written format.

Best wishes

Mercedes Henning

We welcome and value your opinion. If you have
any comments or suggestions, please contact the Head teacher or Chair of
Governors.

PFA News

Thank you to
Francesca Shepherd and Liz Read who have done a fine job of collating, washing,
organising and selling uniform so far this term. Not only does this help raise
funds for the PFA, but more importantly means that good quality school uniforms
are being re-used and are available at an affordable cost for parents. Please
get in touch with them if you’d like to donate or buy uniform. 

We are still getting
the first PFA meeting of the year organised and working out how to do this
safely in current times. We will keep everyone updated. 

Many thanks,

Your PFA

To contact the PFA: 

Email: holytrinitypfa@gmail.com or
join our Facebook page: “Holy Trinity (Great Cheverell) PFA”

Read more...

Dear Parents

Coughing  If your child has a new, continuous cough,
please keep them home and have them tested.

 A continuous cough means
that they have coughed 3 or more times in 24 hours. Or have coughed a lot for
an hour. It does not matter what kind of cough it is.

We cannot have children in
school who are coughing and we will send them home if they cough in school and
ask you to have them tested or isolate for at least 10 days and the rest of the
household for 14 days.

Similarly, if your child has a high temperature
or a change in their sense of taste or smell, they must be tested and isolated
with their family until the negative test result comes back.

ONLY the person with
symptoms should get tested – not the whole household. If the person with
symptoms has a negative test result, EVERYONE in their household can stop
isolating and resume normal life immediately unless they develop symptoms (in
which case it all starts again).

I know that many (or most)
of the coughs your children have will be simple winter colds that we are all
used to. But none of us has the ability to sense whether this particular cough
is Covid or not. It is essential that we all work hard to keep infection out of
our school. Children are not usually badly affected but if your child has Covid
and comes into school, they could infect a child in their Bubble who then meets
up with a vulnerable family member and that could have disastrous consequences.

I do ask everyone to keep in
mind that we are not just trying to keep ourselves safe, but we want to protect
the elderly and vulnerable – this is going to be difficult and inconvenient at
times, I know, but this is a life threatening situation and must be taken with the utmost
seriousness. We have absolutely no flexibility on applying the rules
and will apply them with rigour to keep everyone safe.

A poster is attached to this
newsletter and will also be sent home in hard copy so that you can stick to
your fridge for reference. This gives the precise NHS and Government direction.
Please support us in this. We are trying to save the lives of our most
vulnerable.

Moodle In the
event that a child or a Bubble has to isolate, we will swing into action again
with Moodle and teachers will upload work that your child can do online. If the
rest of your child’s Bubble is still in school, clearly the teacher will not be
able to engage with your child in real time (as they will have a class in front
of them!) but the work will be available for your child to complete. As long as
they are well enough, we would be very grateful if you would support them with
this so that we can continue with the great progress our children have made.

After School We
make a plea for parents to go straight home after picking their children up
from school. This will really help to prevent children from different Bubbles
spending too much time together – and we are trying to do everything we can to
limit the possibility of spreading infection. Already, there are schools in Wiltshire
where the virus is spreading. We are doing everything in our power within
school to keep infection risk as low as we possibly can, and we ask that all
families try to support us with this. As you know, no gatherings of more than 6
should take place indoors or outdoors from Monday.

Thank you Teachers
have asked me to thank you all for your hugely generous gifts at the end of the
summer term – and especially for the kind words and positive messages that you
sent at that time. These are the things we treasure most – the comments on how
happy your children are, and how well you feel they are achieving. That is what
our job is all about and what we love doing. 

Adventure Activity Days We have been fortunate to be able to commission an adventure activity
day for our children on the school field – this will include a mobile climbing
wall, rope swing, archery and other activities. We hope this will help
compensate for the residential trips that have been cancelled and other offsite
trips that we cannot make this term. We expect this to take place on Tuesday 29^th
September and Wednesday 30^th September, with each class having its
own session on the equipment which will be properly cleaned down between
Bubbles. 

We will ask each family to
sign a permission slip for this event since it is a higher risk than our usual
school provision. The coaches are very highly skilled, trained and qualified
and the equipment is checked between use. All reasonable precautions are taken
to keep children safe. The activities are graduated according to the age of the
children. The company usually operates from Brokerswood, if you would like to
take a trip out there to see them in action. If you do not wish your child to
take part, of course we will make sure that they are withdrawn. My thanks to
Mrs Goddard who has led on this project and has done all the work towards
getting the booking. We have decided to fund this event entirely from school
funds as we are aware that many families are probably struggling financially at
the moment. If you would like to make a donation to the school, we are always
extremely grateful for any extra funding which helps us keep the curriculum
exciting and engaging but we are not asking for voluntary donations this time.

Field trips Stonehenge
class (Year1) and White Horse class will be going for walks around our village
in the coming weeks – they will be finding out about aspects of their topics
for this term. Stonehenge class Year 1 will be looking at the houses and homes
in the village next week, finding out what the differences are between old and
new houses. The whole class of Stonehenge will be walking to the local church
in the coming weeks. White Horse class have a project, supported by Mrs Heath
and Mrs Andrew and other people from the village, to find out more about life
here in Great Cheverell in World War 1. You will be notified of these trips by
your child’s class teacher in advance. They will all take place during the
school day. There will be no cost attached to these trips. I am very grateful
to our teachers who are doing their best to keep the curriculum engaging and
“real” even in these complex times.

Chicken pox and measles We have a child in our school who is having treatment for cancer at
the moment and is very vulnerable especially to chicken pox and measles. Please
let us know immediately if your child contracts either of these diseases so
that we can act to keep this child safe. Thank you.

Please return books and whiteboards At lockdown we sent home packs with our younger children with
whiteboards, atlases and reading books. These items are very expensive to
replace so we do ask all our families to return them to us. We will quarantine
them and return them to circulation.

Upcoming Events (Calendar of events will be available on the website at www. holy-trinity.co.uk in the coming week)
Tuesday 22nd September	Falconry exhibition for all children, in Bubbles.	School day
Friday 25th September	Harvest celebration.	In classes, with some art work exhibited for parents outside the school.
Tuesday 29th and Wednesday 30th September	Adventure activity days on our school field.	School day. No request for donations.
Wednesday 21st October	Last day of term.
Monday 2nd November	Children back to school.
Wednesday 18th November	Feedback to parents on children’s current progress and attainment – written format.

Best wishes

Mercedes Henning

We welcome and value your opinion. If you have
any comments or suggestions, please contact the Head teacher or Chair of
Governors.

PFA News

Second Hand Uniform Donations and Sales  Please could you place your bagged
donations into the blue lidded wheelie bins marked Textiles by the recycling
bins in the car park of the school. These will then be washed and sorted for
sale in aid of the PFA in a Covid-safe way. If you would like to buy some
second hand uniform at low prices, please leave a message on the PFA facebook
page or email lizread@mikeread.org
to enquire.

Communications - We have several ways
of communicating with the school community - including via the newsletter,
WhatsApp year groups and also our Facebook page. We occasionally send out
emails if there are more detailed documents. 

If you aren’t a
member already, please consider looking up the Facebook group (details below).
You will be asked a couple of security questions to verify you’re part of the
school. This is one of the ways we can disseminate upto date information but it
is also a community page where you can ask questions and find out about local
events. 

If you’d also like to
be added to the email list, please send an email to us and ask to be
added. 

Fundraising 

Opportunities for
fund raising have been very limited recently, but if you
can, there is an easy way to help us raise funds. 

Please do sign up for
Easyfunding - Its FREE and EASY to use!  Thank you if you are
already. 

If you shop online,
you can raise FREE donations for Holy Trinity School PFA. Over 4,000 shops and
sites will donate to us when you use #easyfundraising to shop with them! 

So far our parents
have raised over  £2800
through this online charity.  

Please sign up and
support us: https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/htspfa/?utm_campaign=raise-more&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook&utm_content=gs

Many thanks, Your
PFA

To contact the PFA:

Email: holytrinitypfa@gmail.com

Or join our Facebook
page: “Holy Trinity (Great Cheverell) PFA”

Read more...

Dear Parents

Thank you! It is wonderful to have our school full of
happy, laughing, chatty children again. Thank you to all parents who prepared
their children so well for their return to school after the extraordinary
events of the Covid lockdown. Every child came into school positively, and we
are very impressed with the way they have settled in school and have been able
to pick up the routines of school life. Behaviour continues to be excellent, as
it always is in this school, and children are joyful, kind, hardworking and
courageous, as they always are. Thank you also for the great work at Drop Off
and Pick Up times – it is seamless!

We will spend plenty of time helping children to find their way
through learning, reflecting and socialising in the school context again, and
will be assessing their stage of learning in the coming weeks. Any child who
needs extra support to regain their trajectory of learning will, of course, be
given that support. It will take some weeks for us to complete the assessments
and to discover the “gaps” in their learning, and we will feed back to parents
on or around Wednesday 18^th November in a brief written format to
let you know how your child is achieving in the core areas of the curriculum
and what, if any, extra intervention will be necessary for them.

New families Thank you to all who have reached out in
friendship to our new families – it can be daunting both as a child and as an
adult to enter a new school community and it is important that we make sure all
our new families feel welcome in this lovely community.  

Parent Governor Elections We have two excellent candidates who have
agreed to stand for election to the position of Parent Governor on our Board of
Governors. One of them will be elected to the position by parents and carers
through a secret ballot. Each parent or person with parental responsibility for
a child in our school has a vote and the completed ballot papers must reach us
by 3.15pm on TUESDAY 15^TH SEPTEMBER 2020 for counting. We shall announce the outcome
the following day by email. Your child will bring the documents home with them
today, including the covering letter from our Clerk to Governors, statements
from the candidates, instructions on how to complete the ballot, and the ballot
papers themselves with an unmarked envelope for returning the ballot papers.

Keeping in touch Please do not hesitate to contact us to
make an appointment for a telephone conversation with your child’s teacher if
you have any concerns. Whilst we cannot have parents on site at present, we do
want to make sure channels of communication remain open. You can email us on admin@holytrinity.wilts.sch.uk,
or phone us on 01380 813796.

Sharing Assembly We are not allowed to have parents on site
for our popular Friday afternoon Sharing Assemblies at present, and, indeed,
the children cannot all gather together either. However, we hope to share some
examples of children’s work on Moodle each week, so do go onto Moodle, to the
“Whole School” tab, and see the work that has been uploaded.  https://vle.holy-trinity.co.uk/
. Children will share some of their work with the rest of the school each week
through TEAMS, and we will move through the classrooms electronically so that
children can show us what they have been doing.

Falconry Exhibition We would usually take our children on
their first field trip of the year in September, but at present this is very
complex with Covid restrictions. So we shall have a visitor to our school who
will show the children his birds of prey and they can enjoy a Falconry
exhibition in their Bubbles. We were very fortunate to have a generous donation
towards our work on recovering from the Covid Lockdown from one of our parents
and this will enable us to fund the experience entirely.

Thanks We thank all our families for ensuring
that children are coming to school with the minimum of baggage from home, so
that we can continue to keep everyone safe in school. You might start to
receive reading books from school, and as they are returned, we will quarantine
them for 72 hours before returning them to circulation. Your child’s teacher
will explain the routine for their classroom – please look out for the messages
and follow the instructions.  

When do I stay at home? If your child shows signs of Covid (a new,
continuous cough, a high temperature or a change in their sense of taste or
smell), please keep them at home and take them for a test. Tests can be
booked on the NHS
testing and tracing for coronavirus website or by telephone, NHS 119. Members of your household will also have
to isolate at this stage. Please let us know about this. If the test is
positive, we will contact Wiltshire Health Protection Team, and it is likely
that they will advise us to close the Bubble of that child for 14 days. Your
child’s name will not, of course, be publicised. If the test is negative your
child, and all members of the household, can return to school and work.

Moodle We shall continue to use Moodle for
homework, communications and projects, so that we keep it fresh in everyone’s
minds just in case we have to swing back into using the platform for full
distance learning for some of our children as we did during lockdown. Your
child’s teacher will let you know how they are using Moodle this year. My
thanks to Patrick Williams, once again, for his work in updating the platform
for the current year and helping us manage the system effectively.

Themes/Topics for this term:
Stonehenge Class (FS and Y1) – Houses and Homes; White Horse class (Y1 and Y2)
– World War 1 with special reference to animals; Sarum class (Y3 and Y4) –
Ancient Egypt; Avebury class (Y4 and Y5) – The Shang Dynasty; Silbury
class (Y5 and Y6) – Comparison between Neolithic times in Britain and
the Shang Dynasty.

Secret codes! Sometimes we use vocabulary or acronyms
that you may not be familiar with – please alert us if we do this so that we
can make sure we are clear in our communications. We will often use the term
KS1 or KS2. These stand for Key Stage 1 
(which is Year 1 and Year 2, and we include the Foundation Stage
children in this group as well), and Key Stage 2 (which includes Year 3, Year
4, Year 5 and Year 6). 

Upcoming Events (Calendar of events will be available on the website at www. holy-trinity.co.uk in the coming week)
Tuesday 22nd September	Falconry exhibition for all children, in Bubbles	School day
Friday 25th September	Harvest celebration	In classes, with some art work exhibited for parents outside the school.
Wednesday 21st October	Last day of term
Monday 2nd November	Children back to school
Wednesday 18th November	Feedback to parents  on children’s current progress and attainment – written format

Best wishes

Mercedes Henning

We welcome and value your opinion. If you have
any comments or suggestions, please contact the Head teacher or Chair of
Governors.

PFA News

Welcome back everyone
and a very big welcome and ‘hello’ to our new families at Holy Trinity.

As many of you will
be aware, all PFA activity has been suspended since March but we are hopeful
that will be getting organised again shortly and looking for ways to raise
funds and support our community and school in new and different ways. We will
keep everyone informed about how we plan to do this.

Any parent or friend
of the school is very welcome and encouraged to get involved with PFA
activities- whether that is by being involved with meetings and helping to lead
events, or by helping out in other ways. We would love more people to become
involved this year, so please do let us know if and when you can help. 

We hope everyone has
had a great first week and look forward to meeting our new families before too
long. 

Many thanks.

To contact the PFA email:
holytrinitypfa@gmail.com or join
our Facebook page: “Holy Trinity (Great Chevrell) PFA”

Read more...

Dear Parents

Thank
you! We wish to thank all our
families for their unfailing support of our school through this very difficult
time. Your children have clearly been very well educated at home through the
Moodle resources and your own creativity, and you have prepared them
beautifully for their return to school – which has been seamless so far, with
all our children coming back happily and full of enthusiasm. Without your generous
and whole hearted support, this would have been so much harder for your
children and for the school community. We salute the great work you have all done
through these unprecedented times and thank you for your tremendous efforts.

We say good bye to our Year 6 children
today – certainly the most unusual Year 6 end of term that I have ever known as
a teacher or headteacher. It will be remembered forever. We wish them well as
they start on the next phase of their career. They are an exceptional group of
young people, friendly, hardworking, kind, brave and joyful … they have all the
skills they need to thrive in secondary school, living out our values in their
daily lives. They will be very much missed.

We welcome the children in years 2, 3, 4
and 5 into school on either Monday or Tuesday for a day of transition with
their new class. School uniform and packed lunches please! Please make sure
that you all know the precise time slot for arrival and departure in the new
academic year – this is a requirement we have to follow to keep children and staff
safe.

Pilgrimage
Day  We had a lovely day of reflection on Wednesday, where we all had the
chance to think about our lives and our responses to things that happen to us,
to remember the things we ought to be thankful for, to remember those who need
our help, to consider how best to look after our world and our own mental
health, and how find a quiet place in our hearts. We were delighted that Bishop
Andrew sent us a lovely message to start the day, reminding us of how we should
enjoy our life’s journey. My thanks to Mrs Edwards who worked so hard to ensure
the smooth running of the day, and to all the teachers, TAs and children for
throwing themselves into the activities with such enthusiasm.  It was a complicated business to arrange all
of this outside on the school field whilst maintaining strict Bubble isolation
but we did it.

Leavers’
Assembly This was an unusual event –
no teachers except the staff for those Bubbles, no parents, none of the other
children from other classes – but it was beautifully done and the children gave
a lovely presentation on their memories of school. A video of the event will be
sent to each of the Year 6 families as soon as it has been edited. Our thanks
to Patrick Williams who filmed and edited this on our behalf.

Special
consideration One of the new children
who will be starting at our school in September is immunocompromised as a
result of chemotherapy and we must make sure we keep them safe. If your child
has chicken pox or measles in particular, please let us know straight away as
these are diseases which can be particularly serious for vulnerable children. We
also remind you that we are a nut free school as we have children who have very
serious nut allergies which could be life threatening.

Sunflowers If
you have grown a beautiful sunflower over the lockdown, please send a photo and
the height of your sunflower. We shall have a display of these images in the
hall when we return to school. All photos and measurements to be sent to Mrs
Goddard at mrsgoddard@holytrinity.wilts.sch.uk

Bus arrangements The Local Authority will run our bus service as usual so if you cannot
bring your child in and out of school in some other way, the bus service is in
place. Please make sure that your children sit on the bus in their class groups
and at a distance from children in other classes. Primary school children do
not have to wear face masks, and may not wear them in school so please do not
send them in with one on.

Welcome Meetings As you know, we usually have welcome meetings for parents at the end of
the summer term or start of autumn term but we are not allowed to do that at
present. So each teacher will send out a letter telling you about the daily
routines, expectations and systems in their classroom. Please do phone in or
email in if you have any questions. We are only too delighted to help in any
way we can.

40^th Anniversary of our school! The Tree of Life looks superb! See the photo at the
bottom of this newsletter. Thank you to everyone who participated. We will keep
the display up for a while and then leave a mounted photo up – a permanent
display of this very unusual anniversary.

Returning to school While most children are likely to make the transition back into school
with no particular difficulty (certainly this has been our experience so far
with children coming back into school very happily and confidently) there may
be those for whom it will be more difficult.

Do feel free to have a
look at the photos on our website and on Facebook to help your children
remember what school looks like. Ask them what they enjoyed about the different
areas of the school – the field, their classroom, PE lessons, lunch etc. Talk
to them positively about what they enjoy about school and encourage them to
talk positively as well. Encourage them to be independent – they may have lost
these skills during this very difficult time. Leave them to complete tasks
unaided with a reward at the end for success. Encourage them to try new things
without your support. Leave them to play on their own without adult
intervention sometimes.

The teachers will be
sending out welcome letters in place of our usual face to face welcome meetings
–  chat to your child about the routines
and expectations outlined in these communications. If you are positive, serene
and cheerful about the situation, your child is likely to find it easier. We
will offer support to any child who is struggling when they come back.

Please
remember to order school lunches through Lataca’s Parentmail as usual – the
menu for September will be available over the summer holidays.

Wrap around childcare Just for your information, we have decided to go
forward with offering wrap around childcare at Holy Trinity, operating out of
the Art Centre for Breakfast club and After school club. We hope, Covid
permitting, that we will be able to launch this in January. Whilst we may not
be able to break even financially in the short term, we hope that more and more
children will join and make it viable to keep running in the long term.

Notification of a change to our admissions policy Because there is the option of applying for admission
to this school on faith grounds, with proof of regular church attendance being
required in this case, we have had to effect a change in the admissions policy
to reflect the fact that there was no church attendance possible during the
Covid Lockdown period. If you wish to see the updated Admissions policy, it is
available on our website, under “Information for Parents”.

E-safety Please
continue to monitor your child’s online activity rigorously – ensure that you
have filters and time limits installed on their devices and make sure that you
can always see what they are doing online. Children are very much at risk in
the online world as they are tech savvy but very naïve. Summer holidays are a
time of especially increased risk to children. Please be vigilant and ensure
that you are aware of what your child is doing and who they are contacting at
all times when they are on their devices.  

Summer holiday safety There are always lots more accidents, some very
serious, amongst children during the summer holidays. These can involve water,
railways, electricity, falls from height and traffic. Please make sure that
your child knows how to keep themselves safe and please maintain close
supervision of your child, especially when they are near any area that might be
a source of danger. We do not want children to be too risk averse, and as
children get older, hypervigilance can be somewhat relaxed but it is very
important that you know where your child is at any time and that you know that
they are safe and able to risk assess situations sensibly.

BBC Bitesize Please
do have a look at the BBC Bitesize resources if you are still educating your
child at home – they have great projects and interactive lessons that you might
like to do once you have finished the work set by your class teacher. https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize They
will also have activities for the summer holidays which you might enjoy.

Don’t Forget!
Wiltshire Local Authority has set up a Wellbeing Hub. You can make contact with
them and they will signpost you to the most appropriate support for your
particular needs, whether this is emotional, financial or physical. Their
details are:  “Wiltshire Wellbeing Hub”

Email: wellbeinghub@wiltshire.gov.uk
or phone 0300 003 4576

We wish all
our families a wonderful, safe summer holiday! Come back refreshed!

Best wishes,

Mercedes Henning

40^th Anniversary of our school – our tree
of life!

PFA News

The
PFA would like to wish you all a happy Summer holidays. The second half of this
academic year has been far from what anyone had planned and all PFA activity
has been suspended since March. That said, we remember the successes we have
had this year- the wonderful Christmas party and fair, numerous cake sales and
uniform sales as well as our special Holy Trinity tea- towels and Christmas
cards. The PFA have also subsidised trips, the building of a new boat in the
playground and also the year 6 leavers’ books- certainly not a lost year. 

We
are hopeful that we will be able to start up with more activity in the new term
and will keep you informed of meetings and activities you can get involved with
when we have more information. 

Thank
you all for your support this year.  Wishing ‘good luck’ to our Year 6s moving on to their new schools and we look forward
to seeing everyone else in September. 

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