Trotts Hill Primary School and Nursery
In September 2024, we embarked on an exciting new project to make our play times even better at Trotts Hill, in conjunction with OPAL. OPAL has won the “best active schools’ programme in Europe” award and been cited in two Parliamentary Reports as outstanding. OPAL is working closely with Sport England to promote more active childhoods. We worked in partnership with OPAL for 18 months and they supported us to deliver the programme. At the end of the project, we were awarded the Platinum Award, placing Trotts Hill in the top 1% of schools nationally for our play offer.
"Play is freely chosen, personally directed, intrinsically motivated behaviour that actively engages the child. Play can be fun or serious. Through play children explore social, material and imaginary worlds and their relationship with them, elaborating all the while a flexible range of responses to the challenges they encounter. By playing, children learn and develop as individuals, and as members of the community" (Play Council 2001).
Working in unison with the children, we have developed a new play charter which captures all of the words in answer to the questions: What does play look like at Trotts Hill? How do we keep safe?
Trotts Hill Primary is an OPAL Platinum School!
We are thrilled to announce that after our final OPAL audit on 19th March 2024, we have been awarded PLATINUM for our play provision. This is the highest OPAL award and we scored 96% in the final audit. The Platinum Award puts our school in the top 1 percentile of UK primary schools in terms of the quality of our play offer. We are one of only a few schools locally to have achieved this award and are very proud of the whole play team and OPAL working party, who have worked tirelessly to improve playtimes for the children in our school.
Feedback from our final audit:
"Trotts Hill is a brilliant OPAL school with so many exciting spaces that offer endless play opportunities to children of all ages, genders, ethnicities, abilities and disabilities. The time, commitment and effort that has gone into improving playtime is incredible. The way that play has been embedded across the school will ensure that children benefit from their improved play opportunities for years to come. The Play Team are dedicated to supporting and facilitating children's play and developing the play spaces across the site. The children's enthusiasm for OPAL is so joyful to see, reflected in the presentation given by a group of year 6 children during the final audit meeting. Congratulations to all the team, the school staff, the children, and the wider community, - this is so well deserved’
Please see the article in the Stevenage Comet:
Stevenage school named among top 1 per cent in the country | The Comet
Staff voice: 'The best thing about OPAL is... the creativity of the children and the harmony it has created.'
Parent voice: 'OPAL broadens their imaginations, encourages, new ideas, encourages team work and independence. It provides endless play opportunities and excitement and is confidence building. I love it! Such a brilliant addition to Trotts Hill. It brings an element of my childhood that I loved and have fond memories of.'
Pupil voice: 100% children stated playtimes are better with OPAL! Marnie, Y4: 'There's nothing we can't do!'
Please be reminded of the 10 things every parent should know about play:
1. Children learn through their play.
Don’t underestimate the value of play. Children learn and develop:
cognitive skills – like math and problem solving in a pretend grocery store
physical abilities – like balancing blocks and running on the playground
new vocabulary – like the words they need to play with toy dinosaurs
social skills – like playing together in a pretend car wash
literacy skills – like creating a menu for a pretend restaurant
2. Play is healthy.
Play helps children grow strong and healthy. It also counteracts obesity issues facing many children today.
3. Play reduces stress.
Play helps your children grow emotionally. It is joyful and provides an outlet for anxiety and stress.
4. Play is more than meets the eye.
Play is simple and complex. There are many types of play: symbolic, sociodramatic, functional, and games with rules-–to name just a few. Researchers study play’s many aspects: how children learn through play, how outdoor play impacts children’s health, the effects of screen time on play, to the need for recess in the school day.
5. Make time for play.
As parents, you are the biggest supporters of your children’s learning. You can make sure they have as much time to play as possible during the day to promote cognitive, language, physical, social, and emotional development.
6. Play and learning go hand-in-hand.
They are not separate activities. They are intertwined. Think about them as a science lecture with a lab. Play is the child’s lab.
7. Play outside.
Remember your own outdoor experiences of building forts, playing on the beach, sledding in the winter, or playing with other children in the neighbourhood. Make sure your children create outdoor memories too.
8. There’s a lot to learn about play.
There’s a lot written on children and play. Here are some NAEYC articles and books about play. David Elkind’s The Power of Play (Da Capo, 2007 reprint) is also a great resource.
9. Trust your own playful instincts.
Remember as a child how play just came naturally? Give your children time for play and see all that they are capable of when given the opportunity.
10. Play is a child’s context for learning.
Children practice and reinforce their learning in multiple areas during play. It gives them a place and a time for learning that cannot be achieved through completing a worksheet. For example, in playing restaurant, children write and draw menus, set prices, take orders, and make out checks. Play provides rich learning opportunities and leads to children’s success and self-esteem.
© National Association for the Education of Young Children — Promoting excellence in early childhood education - See more at: http://families.naeyc.org/learning-and- development/child-development/10-things-every-parent-should-know-about- play#sthash.1DhJwbPA.dpuf
Our new display celebrating the 16 different play types in action!
This video celebrates children's OPAL play in the Autumn term. It contains a new play charter voted for by the children, as well as the unveiling of our gazebo and endless, creative play. The children continue to amaze us with their ability to design, problem solve and innovate whilst understanding their personal boundaries and taking sensible risks.
Year 6 are working on a number of projects to maintain and improve OPAL play, including moving and improving the water area, creating pathways in forest school and planting wild seeds.
The children’s play since returning from the holidays has been so amazing that all our current resources are now in use and there is very little left in the large loose parts store. They have got to work building with lots of small dens popping up. Towards the end of last term, they collectively built a Mosque and used it for prayer. This has now been rebuilt three times, each time with more thought to the features and design. Their play is becoming more sophisticated and they are using real life skills such as engineering without even realising it!
We began rewilding the site by allowing areas of the grass to grow long and ended up with many new wildflowers such as bee orchids growing around the site. We are in the process of planning for next years rewilding by eliminating areas of the grass to make way for sowing wildflower seeds.
We are hoping to purchase a tree house and zip line following requests from the children. We have already bought a lower impact zip line that uses a slack line which we will be introducing in the next couple of weeks. We have also ordered a covered gazebo which FROTH have kindly donated the money for and will be installed hopefully by the end of November.
Over the next year, we intend to revisit all our play areas with a view to improvements and further enhancing our play offer.
On Friday 28th June, Trotts Hill hosted an OPAL day and shared our journey with 35 schools. We would love for every school to be an OPAL school and will continue to share our passion for OPAL.
*Music is 'Play Thing' by Ketsa, Free Music Archive
Thank you to all the families that joined us after school this afternoon.
We hope everyone enjoyed trying out some of the fantastic equipment and playing together as a community.
OPAL Progress Report – Autumn 1 2023
We had our Development 3 meeting in July with Bethan from OPAL who was extremely pleased with our progress so far. We identified actions and next steps as we continue to develop our play offer for our children. Development 4 is booked for 30th November giving us an opportunity to run through the final audit. Bethan from OPAL remarked we are the best school in her mentoring portfolio!
Our Play Team undertook playwork training in July to underpin knowledge to scaffold and extend children’s play. We learned about the 16 different play types and are working on ideas to encourage and improve play in all these areas.
We are very grateful to FROTH who have agreed to fund resources for us including: another shed delivered and installed on the 30 October, a Creative Crate which is an outdoor storage unit for craft resources, to keep them dry and enable us to offer collage materials, painting, junk modelling, chalk, crayons, pencils etc. Our ever growing collection of loose parts has outgrown our current shed and the new, larger wooden shed will add scope for an even greater range of resources to be provided. One of our parents has volunteered to help us to improve the storage within the existing shed and to create some upright pallets to use in the creative, water and mud kitchen areas.
Since the last update we have introduced den building, an increased range of large loose parts, an extensive range of dressing up, junk modelling, tree climbing, a performance area and water play. We are providing regular play assemblies to introduce resources which provides a dialogue between staff and children, using a collaborative approach to managing risk. Children are engaging in a deeper level of play than ever before and engaging in more risky play. Examples include:
· Rolling inside the large tyres down the hill. Children are managing their own risk and taking steps to mitigate, including adding cushions inside the tyre, wearing dressing up around their head for protection and working as a team to ensure the area and activity is safe.
· A fairground ride consisting of the canoe on a pile of pallets which two children hold on to and shake down a ramp they have made. Also a spectator area and queuing system which the children manage and maintain.
· Various tyre swings, bar swings and rope swings
· Using the large loose parts to create obstacle courses, a gym, more sophisticated dens, a flag and flag pole stand
· Walking on top of the cable reels
· Tree climbing
· Being increasingly inventive with their use of equipment, coming up with new ideas and thinking critically and planning to achieve their aims.
We are even occasionally seeing some of the die-hard football players choosing other activities!
Our OPAL project has got off to a fantastic start this term. Our children have enjoyed being able to use to whole field to play and they have especially loved having all of the classes mix together. Mrs Hunter has been working very hard to sort through all of the donations we have received and she has created an amazing mud kitchen, which children from all classes have been busy cooking and creating in.
We are very much looking forward to the next phase in our project, which will include introducing small world, large construction and risky play.
To facilitate this project, we will be supported by FROTH to raise funds to buy resources and storage in the first instance. The OPAL project will transform playtime, benefit the whole school and have a positive impact on the community.
When our new shed arrives we will be asking for donations from parents and the local community. Loose parts are any materials that can be easily moved, combined, and incorporated into children's free play. The items we are looking for will enable us to enjoy a wider range of play experiences during playtime (see below for some examples):
Suitcases of any size and type
Anything on wheels/castors
Plastic milk crates
Briefcases, especially hard cased ones
Kitchen pots, pans, baking trays, worktables, wooden spoons, chopping boards
Tools like spades, trowels and brooms (no forks)
Tubes of various sizes and various materials
Buckets and watering cans
Fabric (large sheets/brightly coloured fabric e.g. old duvet covers)
Foam sheets / body boards
Cable drums
Guttering
Noodles (the type you use in the swimming pool!)
Pegs (to help to set up dens)
We will use this webpage to keep you updated on our progress.