School will close for the Easter holidays on Thursday 13th April at 11am. School will re-open on Monday 24th April for all children with the usual 1:45pm finish.

Mrs Boyd and staff would like to wish you all a happy Easter. Have a lovely break.

Well done to our Digital Leaders who took part in iCode 2017 last week. We had a great day with Team iTeach who came to the school and ran several fun coding workshops for us. Mrs Rooney and Mrs Connolly were definitely in competition with our digital leaders, they were flying through the activities. Over 150 children from schools across Northern Ireland were invited and the day was filled with problem solving, collaborative challenges and development of digital skills. The children were coding using Swift Playgrounds, Tynker and the SPK +. A brilliant day for coding! A big thank you to iTeach who planned the challenges for us.

Holy Trinity Primary School was awarded the Eco-Schools ‘Green Flag’  2015 and we are currently working towards  our 2^nd Green Flag. The ECO –Schools programme has provided a stronger understanding of environmental awareness throughout the school and the community.

To support the children’s commitment to meeting environmental targets the ECO Committee and Miss Cushenan, the School’s ECO Coordinator, have organised a special ECO week. Various activities are planned for all classes. Foundation stage will have an opportunity to learn more about the importance of recycling. Key Stage 1 will learn about the story of paper; Key Stage 2 will visit a Recycling Bus and Primary 7 will participate in a workshop facilitated by Habitat for Humanity. A Fair Trade themed assembly from Mr Colgan’s and Miss Cushenan’s Primary 4 classes will teach the Key Stage 1 children about the importance of decent working conditions and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers.

The week will conclude on Friday with the school holding a designated ‘Power Down Day’ to inspire students to think about how much energy they use every day. Everyone will be encouraged to use less electricity and switch off appliances when not in use.

Holy Trinity PS remains committed to our environmental education through our initiatives to promote the efficient use of energy and resources, paper recycling, litter etc. Through local, national and global studies we ensure our pupils are increasingly aware of the significant contribution they can all play to make our world a better and more beautiful place.

Holy Trinity is delighted to be the ‘hub’ for a day of coding and programming on Tuesday 4th April. iTeach will be out for the day giving over 150 children an iCode experience not to be forgotten.

The day starts at 10am and goes on until  2:30pm with workshops running throughout the day!

We look forward to welcoming all our visitors tomorrow and learning some new concepts through coding and programming.

Holy Trinity Cross country running teams took part in the 10^th annual Belfast School Cross Country Event in association with Belfast City Council on Thursday 30^th March. This was the West Belfast Heat and took place in Falls Park.10 other schools took part including St Teresa’s, St Oliver Plunkett’s, St John the Baptist, Holy Child, St Kevin’s, St Clare’s,  Bunscoil an Sleibhe Duibh, Gaelscoil Na Bhfal, St Peter’s, and Bunscoil Phobal Feirste.In the girls’ race a strong Holy Trinity team took 1^st place overall with top ten individual places going to Rhianna Murphy and Cara Nolan.The boys’ team finished in 2^nd place overall against a strong field. Christin Walsh, Jack Ireland, Aaron Makel and James Kelly all finished in the top 20 places.Both teams represented their school excellently and will now represent all the West Belfast Schools in the Belfast Final in Ormeau Park on Thursday 22nd March.

On Tuesday 28^th March children from Primary 3 to Primary 7 took part in a fantastic Virtual Reality experience using Google Expeditions. This is a new app developed by Google to open up the classroom for an immersive learning experience and a new tool to help us demonstrate our teachings. Scott from Google brought  60 phones, 60 Google Cardboards and 2 tablets to run the Expeditions from. The teachers brought their children to the sessions so they could take their classes on virtual field trips, giving children a deeper understanding of the world beyond the classroom.

Expeditions is a revolutionary tool that teachers can use to make lessons truly immersive. With the use of Virtual Reality headsets; our children viewed  an exciting variety of 360° photo spheres and 3D images including the Pyramids of Egypt, The Great Barrier Reef, the Amazon Forest, San Diego Zoo, Ocean world  and even outer space. What a fun day!

Don’t forget to wear  your PE gear in on Friday for Freddy Fitness day!

We hope you all had a lovely, special Mother’s Day. Mr Hackett had his green fingers on the go again last week and organised a fantastic couple of days planting with children from P2-P7.

Have a look at our video by clicking on the Mother’s Day title.

Congratulations to Team iCode who have completed their Coding After Schools Club! Well done on all your hard work!