Collective Worship

In school, we have a daily act of collective worship. Collective worship is an invitational moment of our school day in which our school community can come together as one. As an inclusive school, we ensure that all children can participate during this period of peace and refection. All children are invited to pray or contemplate in their unique way. All faiths and viewpoints are welcomed and valued.
 
Our school vision, LOVE God LOVE Neighbour LOVE Self, sits at the heart of our collective worships. We follow the Christian calendar, exploring main events and themes throughout the year. Collective worship themes also incorporate national and international events which encourage the children to develop a broader understanding of the world and deepen their sense of a shared responsibility.
 
We are immensely proud of our unique and diverse school community. In addition to the Christian calendar, we also celebrate important dates and special events from other faiths and world religions, for example Eid, Diwali and Vaisakhi. We encourage children and staff to share personal experiences, wherever possible.

We try to give our children many opportunities to demonstrate our school's core values of love, friendship, compassion and respect, and affirm their commitment by celebrating their successes in our Golden Assemblies and in our classroom collective worships. We regularly organise annual whole-school fundraising events and activities to support specific charities and we ensure that we respond to local or national needs as they arise.

We endeavour to make our worships creative and memorable. They can involve music, stories, stillness, meditation, drama, prayer, poetry and reflection. We have adopted a number of whole school mindfulness approaches to support our young children in becoming calm, still and quiet.

During the week, we organise our Collective Worships in the following way:

Monday: Whole school collective worship (led by the Head of School)

Tuesday: Clas collective worship

Wednesday: Singing collective worship

Thursday: Key Stage collective worship

Friday: Celebration collective worship (Golden Book)

Every collective worship is thoughtfully and carefully planned and serves a different and unique purpose. We encourage regular visitors into our collective worship wherever possible and we regularly visit St Augustine's Church.

Our collective worships are organised into four key parts: hello time; story time; reflection time; prayer time.

We have adopted a whole school prayer that children take in turns to deliver during our whole school collective worships. Our school prayer, although special, is invitational. This means that it is never forced nor is it compulsory. In addition to our school payer, we also have our own 'singing prayer'.

During collective worship, twelve Christian values are explored over a two year period. Rooted in Bible teaching, each half-term value represents the fruit that grows as the teaching is lived out in everyday life. We use collective worship as an opportunity to apply these values to our school’s vision of ‘LOVE God LOVE Neighbour LOVE Self’. This promotes the spiritual, moral, social and cultural growth of each individual in a collective and collaborative way.

The twelve values explored are:

  • Friendship (core school value)

  • Compassion (core school value)

  • Respect (core school value)

  • Courage

  • Forgiveness

  • Generosity

  • Justice

  • Service

  • Perseverance

  • Thankfulness

  • Trust

  • Truthfulness

Exploring these values will allow our children to look beyond themselves and ask 'big questions'. Below are some of the key texts that we will be using in addition to biblical stories during whole school and class collective worship:
Values in Action
To support our children in making purposeful and meaningful links from their learning in collective worship to themselves and their world, we have created a 'Values in Action' overview map. Children regularly experience visitors into school, local trips and outings, as well as Theme days and Theme weeks. Children have the opportunity to share their learning outside of school through regular Home Learning activities linked to our half-termly values. At the end of each half-term, children have the opportunity to receive the 'Head of School Award', which are explicitly linked to our collective worship values.
 
 
Our whole school collective worships are supported through the resource, 'Roots and Fruits' (Imaginor). Our class Collective Worships are supported through the resources 'Oscar Out of the Box' and 'Jack in the Box' (Imaginor). Further information on these resources can be found here.
 
A copy of our Collective Worship Policy can be found here.