It is hard to believe another year has drawn to a close but it is a good time to reflect and celebrate a busy and successful year at Vallis First School.
We encourage our parents to be involved as much as possible and during the spring term we had the first of our Family Learning events which was an opportunity for parents to enjoy working with their children on fun and practical maths activities related to multiplication. We then enjoyed World Book day, with parents and children making hats representing their favourite books and book characters ready for our hat parade. Parents were also invited in to share their favourite stories.
As part of Book Week we planned a Family Learning ‘Poetry and art’ evening which was attended by over 150 parents and children. The resulting art work from the evening’s activity and the children’s work during Book Week is a spectacular mummuration of starlings displayed in our School Hall. We have been fortunate to have been part of the Frome Schools ‘Word up’ project run by Lisa Millard who obtained funding for our Key Stage 2 children to access all sort of opportunities including authors in residence and trips to Bath Literature festival as well as authors sharing their work with children at the Cheese and Grain and Merlin Theatre.
Through Jackdaws who co-ordinate local music we have taken part in the ‘Year of Brass’ concert at the Cheese and Grain accompanying professional brass players during the spring term. We then joined other local schools to perform in the Schools Opera performance in the summer term. This term the violinists took part in Frome College Christmas Concert in St John’s which was well received.
In the spring term we welcomed the Shakespeare in Schools company who provided a delightful insight into the much loved Shakespeare play ‘ A Midsummer Night’s dream’; performing this alongside staff and children in our Key Stage 2.
We joined in National Science week this year with a focus on promoting interest and careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM). As well as enjoying a number of exciting and stimulating experiments, we invited parents and members of the community, who use STEM subjects in their work, to talk about their careers. A number of boys and girls are now talking about becoming scientists and going to university when they are older.
Once again we took part in the Frome Schools Travel Challenge as part of promoting healthier lifestyle choices as well as fundraising for Frome’s Missing Link cycle track. We welcomed the smoothie bike to school for the launch breakfast and won the Bike and Scooter rack made by Men’s Shed. We also had a visit from the Life Bus in the summer term which reinforced messages about healthy lifestyle choices for children and parents. The action-packed school sports morning was organised by Ian Groves and his team at IG sports.
In the summer, Key Stage One children had a play festival organised by Child’s Play UK. Key Stage Two children enjoyed a trip to the Roman Baths and our Reception children enjoyed their trip to Bath City Farm.
We were delighted that our Forest School and allotment both won prizes in ‘Frome in Bloom’ once again, thanks to the hard work of the staff and children. Being part of our local community is very important to us as a school and this year we donated all the proceeds from our Harvest Festival to Fair Frome. We also collected money for this year’s Poppy appeal and for Save the Children and Frome Food Bank during our Christmas performances.
Frome Schools’ Anti-bullying march in Victoria Park, which took place this term during National Anti-bullying Week, came about as a result of a suggestion from one of our pupils and was well received locally.
In April this year the school received confirmation from our Ofsted short inspection that we remain a good school where children are safe and happy and staff, parents and governors are supportive. The children access a high quality provision which encourages them to be ‘the best they can be’.
We are grateful to the community of Frome who are so generous with their support and the opportunities they offer to us as a school. We have enjoyed our busy year of learning together and look forward to all that the next year holds!
