Collective worship is a very special and important part of our school day, it is a shared time for us to come together and reflect on the many varied parts of our lives.
We were certainly 'Living life in all it's fullness' at our Village Patronal Festival on the 26th Novemeber when we took to the stage to sing some of our favourite songs of worship, including My Lighthouse! Later in December we joined the Kirkby Lunch Club toshare our Christmas singing as well as a few favourites!
This half term our Golden Tread is to ‘Lifelong Readers' and our planning team are collecting ideas to reflect on this thread in our Worship.
We are looking forward to our first meeting of the year, which is on the 19th January. We already have some ideas but we want to start to think about Collective Worship in 2023!
We meet every month as a school community to think about, reflect and plan our Collective Worship time, we also have cake and refreshments! From this term we are moving our monthly meeting to after school and we had Liz and Ian join us for our meeting. We all worked really hard and have had some great ideas which we are now living out during our daily Collective Worship sessions. We are also trailing a resource which helps us to link current news topics to our Christian Values and to think deeply about living out our values and ethos. So far we have looked at food and Shackleton’s lost ship!
Here are some photos from our planning meetings, everyone is welcome so if you want to join the group please see Mrs Pawson- our next meeting isn't far away.
About Collective Worship at our school
Each Collective Worship is based on our school vision and values to ‘Live life in all its fullness’ John 10:10 and ‘Shine like stars in the sky’ Philippians 2:15. To have the courage to act with kindness, patience, love and peace in all the communities they serve in. We are reflecting on our Christian values of kindness, love, patience and peace alongside our golden thread. Our golden thread this half term is to be 'life long readers'.
Our Collective Worship is …
INVITATIONAL
Everyone is welcome to take part in collective worship, as much or as little as they are comfortable with. This means we use invitational language and carefully consider our choice of words and songs. Children are invited to pray but are not compelled or expected to do so; they always have a choice. We invite them to pray or reflect in whatever way they feel comfortable.
INCLUSIVE
Acts of worship need to be inclusive of all. Therefore, we choose topics and ideas that are shared by different faiths and worldviews. When we present Christian teaching, we make it clear that this is ‘what Christians believe’, saying things like:
‘I wonder why this story might be important to Christians?’
‘The story today comes from the Bible (the holy book of Christians), which teaches that …
Our worship should be accessible for children and young people with a range of different backgrounds, we also offer a variety of activities, so that children and young people with differing needs can all find something they can engage with.
INSPIRING
We aim for our acts of worship to inspire those engaging with them. How might it engage their emotions, enabling a sense of peace, comfort, hope or motivation? How might it inspire them into action, into thinking differently and considering their behaviour or actions? How might it inspire them to reflect on their faith or beliefs, and on the faith or beliefs of others?