Christingle at church - December 2023...
Being a Church School
Churches were the first to provide mass education in England and Wales, and The National Society was founded in 1811 to provide schools for poor children. The National Society still inspect Church Schools today.
The Church of England's purpose in its schools is providing a distinctive and effective education that reflects God's love for humanity. Church of England schools do not try to convert, but rather they give children from many walks of life the opportunity to learn within a Christian environment. In considering new provision the Church of England has an especial care for areas of social and economic disadvantage and for those who have least in life.
Within the context of the Christian faith, we aspire to nurture the spiritual dimension in our children. We embed Christian values at the heart of school life. This is reflected in the behaviour, attitude and performance of learners and staff alike. Teachers "go the extra mile" on behalf of others. Spiritual Development is very much a part of everything we do at our school...
Spiritual Development at St Michael's 2023-24
At St Michael’s, Christian Values underpin our ethos and vision for our school.
Our vision is that we Believe and Achieve to be the best that we can be!. We believe and achieve in all that we do supported by our Christian values. if we have faith/belief in ourselves and our community, then God will guide us to be the best that we can be and we will achieve. This achievement will mean that we lead the 'best life' we can and develop the Christian understanding of being part of the Kingdom of God now and forever.
We follow the Lincolnshire Agreed Syllabus for RE which we further support with their scheme of work for RE and then we also follow the Understanding Christianity scheme. We have a long term plan which looks at why we teach aspects following the mantra, why this, why now. We hope that our children will grow in knowledge, understanding and faith.
We also have excellent links with St Michael’s Church, Thorpe-on-the-Hill, and Revd. Vaughan leads worship at school – once a month. He also visits classrooms and spends time getting to know us and helping us feel confident to ask questions. We currently do not have a Bishop’s Visitor but when we do, they lead a monthly worship at school.
Collective Worship is central to school life...it is the 'heartbeat' for us! We are all invited to attend at the start of every day! Children tell us that they love it...it's calm...it's fun...it's a safe place to be! Much of what happens in Collective Worship underpins our work on spiritual development. We have a long term plan where we focus on one of Christian values every half-term and link this to a bible story as well as looking at our value in everyday life.
We regularly hold Collective Worship at St Michael's Church and we have a permanent display which showcases our work to the local parish. This is in the main worship area and updated half-termly. We are working on developing reflective responses to our work from the parishioners.
We encourage other members of the local faith community to regularly support worship at school.
We actively invite parents to celebrate worship at school including our Harvest festival, Christingle Service and Easter Pilgrimage. Previously, we have held a toothpaste day to celebrate and promote a deeper understanding of the Holy Trinity as well as using fidget spinners to support this understanding!
There is more information about what happens in our Collective Worships on the front page of our website. For existing parents, there is lots of information on Class Dojo about worship in school.
We have a Collective Worship Council who meet every half-term to plan worship with Mrs Weaver - we try and make Collective Worship fun, inspiring and spiritual for us all! We also organise some Collective Worships and monitor what happens in Collective Worship by using Class Dojo.
We support the Lincoln Larder when we donate our provisions from our Harvest Festival to them each year. We also support the Christmas Sacks Charity every Christmas - we donate gifts to their appeal with our gift tree. Each term we have a focus charity and we raise funds to support these charities.
This year, we have continued to work with our local community and combat loneliness. Drawing on the ideas from the Community Café which we were part of, we now hold community coffee mornings in school and welcome the community in. We also welcome community volunteers into school to support learning including reading...much of this has stemmed from Love Your Parish week where the school community engaged with the village community and shared a morning of 'spiritualness' through a 'talking walk'. This year, we have made a Christmas Card for every member of the village which were hand delivered by the children. We believe that it is important to support our children in understanding that charity work is more than raising money for a one-off charity but is about sustaining a link and supporting 'charity' by the giving of ourselves and our time.
The specific charities this year are:
Autumn Term 1 – Lincoln Larder and our community as well as Lincs and Notts Air Ambulance
Autumn Term 2 – Children in Need and Christmas Sacks - gift tree.
Spring Term 1 – Comic Relief
Spring Term 2 – Homeless
Summer Term 1 – TBC
Summer Term 2 – TBC
Each year, we receive a visit from our local Diocese who support us with ongoing ideas to continually improve - it is also nice to celebrate what we are doing well! We last had a visit in June 2023 and look forward to welcoming our new advisor in July 2024.
Here is our most recent SIAMS report...we are very happy with this and feel that this reflects us as a school.
You can also find out more about our values and vision by looking at this page...Vision and Values
We have an Understanding Christianity frieze in our hall that all classes use to support teaching and learning in RE. It also helps us to understand how our Christian vision fits in.
Below is our school prayer and altar. The school prayer was devised by our Worship Council a few years ago and we love it!
The altar is changed every year and each class makes a gift for it and brings these at harvest time. We always ask our Reception class to make a cross as it is the start of their journey with us as a church school.
Easter is a very special time in our school. We hold our own Holy Week if it doesn't fit with the traditional time. We start the week by all bringing flowers to decorate our cross - it always looks so beautiful! The flowers then die during the week and the Easter holidays - this depicts what happened to Jesus and we use the image when we return to discuss these ideas. Tuesday is normally our whole school outdoor learning day - lots of koinonia in action, reflecting on the Easter story through various activities, appreciating our environment and eating sausages from the open fire! We all love this day and sharing together. Thursday is our pilgrimage day - we walk around our village looking at the stations of the cross and finish with a meal and a service at church. Throughout the week, we work on art projects together - this year we focused on different types of crosses, last year we focused on the stations of the cross. Below are 2023-24!
Collective Worship Council 2023-24
