As a church school, we have a fantastic relationship with our local church – St Swithins – and we are part of the Diocese of York. We regularly use the church throughout the year for a wide range of activities and events. Religious services at Harvest, Christmas and Easter are held in the church where we invite parents, carers and the community to be part of our children-led services. As part of our end of year celebrations, we hold a leavers’ service in the church too, where the children moving on from our school have an opportunity to reflect on their time with us. We also have access to the church throughout the school day, with lessons often being taken over to the church to provide a different learning environment. You can visit the St Swithin’s Church website for lots more information here.
We have reflection areas in all classrooms, the corridors and an outside reflection area in our grounds. Children have access to these quiet spaces where they can reflect, read or pray at times during the day. There are regular opportunities to respond to collective worships in these spaces including classroom collective worship response books.
We have also updated our Outdoor Reflection Area which is used regularly for children to be reflective during busy outdoor playtimes!
We are delighted to share that our new worship team has been appointed, with a representative from each year group, voted for by their peers.
The children will play an active role in planning, leading and evaluating collective worship in the school.
The team will also help to lead Harvest and Christingle services at St Swithins church. They will also be active in how we can support our community, which promotes our belief in courageous advocacy and being agents of change.
Mrs Tippett and the Worship Team meet to discuss how we can support our school and community through different projects and actions. We strive to be agents of change and contribute to the wider community and indeed, world by making small changes in school and in our lives. For example, the Worship Team work closely with the Pupil Parliament representatives and our School Council to ensure that we work together on our chosen Global Goal. We also commit to local community projects to raise the profile of specific projects. We are currently coming together with PC Bainton to ensure that our roads outside of school are safe for everyone!
‘Tea with Mrs Tippett’ is an opportunity for all school stakeholders to get together and discuss how we can make our wonderful school even better! Parents/carers, governors, the trustees from the Bridget Biggs Trust and the Heron Trust, members of St Swithins Church, the local Parish committee and other valued members of the community are invited for a cuppa and a biscuit (or two!)
Courageous advocacy is the act of speaking out or taking action for a cause or belief, especially for those whose voices are not heard as loud as others. Our children know that it requires courage, strength, and a willingness to take risks or face opposition to achieve positive change. Our children learn that they must gain confidence in being heard so that they can then help others in need.
Developed by the Church of England, courageous advocacy encourages people, particularly children, to become “agents of change” by understanding injustices, developing empathy, and engaging in social action at local, national, and global levels to build a fairer world.
We teamed up with our local church, St Swithins, to be courageous advocates when we heard about their ‘Warm Wednesdays’ project to provide a warm space for anyone in our community who needed it each Wednesday afternoon.Key Stage 2 children baked brownies and flapjacks and delivered these to the church in time for the community to enjoy. They were also delivered by the church volunteers to the local community.
We also take part in the yearly sponsored Elf Run to support Dove House Hospice and have managed to raise over £600!
This event has been a tradition in Sproatley for many years and it allows us to raise money to help care for people with life-limiting illnesses.
Every year, the whole school attends our Harvest Festival service at St Swithin’s church. The service is designed alongside our Worship Team and often includes a reading from the Worship Team, some prayers read by our Year 6 children and some harvest artwork and poems by our younger children.
We are always extremely grateful for the huge contributions made by our Sproatley community to our harvest collection. It is a treasured part of our school year!
An important part of our RE curriculum is when the whole school comes together to learn through a‘Big RE Day’.
Within our weekly RE lessons, we look at Big Questions to generate discussions and the sharing of ideas. As part of the ‘Big RE Day’, the children come together in various ways to explore these questions through different tasks and projects.
For example, our children came together in their mixed-age, school house teams to tackle the Big Question ‘How are Festivals of Light celebrated in different religions?’ and spent time in their school communities.
In each classroom, there was a different focus:
* Advent
* Advent with a focus on Christingle
* Hanukkah
* Diwali
Each house team visited each classroom and were part of the classroom experience linked to the different festivals. At the end of the day, we all came together as a school to share and reflect on what we had learned. This immersive approach to learning is very successful as shown by our pupil voice.
Another church service which is valued is our annual Christingle service at St Swithins’ church.
The children make their own Christingles in school and lots of families attend the event to be reminded of the story of Christmas and Jesus’ birth. We are also reminded that Jesus is the ‘Light of the World’ bringing hope with the Christingle candles representing this spiritual light
We participate in singing, readings from the children and finally the lighting of the Christingles themselves.
Thank you to everyone who has celebrated with us and we look forward to seeing you all this year.
