Collective Worship

Collective Worship

As a Church School we celebrate a collective act of worship every day. We are very proud of our Worship which takes place in the hall. We have a small altar, light candles, sign the Trinity, say prayers and sing a hymn or song together. All classes have a chance to present a worship and parishioners and visiting ministers regularly lead our collective worship. We welcome parents and families in to share our FRIDAY FAMILY WORSHIP every Friday morning at 9.00am. Some of our parents and parishioners also serve refreshments afterwards.

At the beginning of each Worship we say and sign the trinity and light three candles. In the name of the Father, in the name of the son and in the name of the Holy Spirit.

Our school prayer

O Lord, bless our school
That working together,
And playing together,
We may learn to serve you,
And to serve one another,
Amen.

For Lent this year, we have set the children and staff a ’40 Acts of Generosity Challenge’. This is where we all give things back rather than give things up. They are all simple acts of generosity that we are hopeful will become habit after Lent and will lead to children feeling happier and more included in and out of school. They are in the following different categories: gratitude, care for the environment, giving, school community, kindness, new friends and doing the right thing.  Hopefully they will also share this generosity and kindness throughout their lives e.g. when they go to high school, at home and in the community, the workplace etc.
Each class will focus on the 40 different acts of generosity and kindness on the attached schools challenge card in the lead up to Easter (it doesn’t include Sundays). Our WOW (Worship Our Way) group will monitor and celebrate the acts of generosity in Friday Family Worship. Please encourage your child to complete these acts at home too. There is also a family 40 acts of generosity challenge wall chart too which you might want to take part in as a family.

            

40acts-Schools-Challenge-card

40 acts family wallchart

Collective Worship Policy

Policy for Religious Education

Worship is such an important part of our lives at St Barnabas. Our children say that Worship is a time of reflection, for praying and singing to God. They say that in Worship they feel peaceful, as one family and they feel that God is with them. Please have a look at some of our Worships this term that have been led by Mrs Ham, Rev David, WOW group, class teachers and individual classes.

     

These are our Christian Values. Each week in celebration Worship teachers choose a child that has demonstrated one of the Christian Values the most and they receive the super Citizen of the week award.

Our Values

“Three things will last forever – faith, hope and love – and the greatest of these is love.”

1 Corinthians 13:13

At St Barnabas we are proud of our caring, Christian ethos, underpinned by the Christian values that permeate our teaching and learning and shape every member of our school family. Each half term we focus on a Christian value and explore how it can change the way we live our daily lives.

Our WOW group conducted a survey and we all agreed that the values we feel express our school family are:

Courage – Saint Barnabas was a great ‘encourager’,

Trust, Forgiveness, Friendship,

Service, Generosity and Respect

Peace prayers and reflections

Collective Worship Policy (Currently under review)

Generosity Family Homework

Friendship Family Homework

Worship is such an important part of our lives at St Barnabas. Our children say that worship is a time of reflection, for praying and singing to God. They say that in worship they feel peaceful, as one family and they feel that God is with them. Please take a look at some of our worships this term that have been led by Mrs Thomas, Mrs Ham, Our WOW Group, Reverend David, Reverend Kathryn, Bishop Phillip and Archedeacon Michael.

We don’t just pray in Worship, we pray in lots of places. We have special prayer places on each of the playgrounds, on the Reception yard, in the hall and in the entrance area as well as in our classrooms. We enjoy creating prayer flags, crosses, ribbons and stones at lunchtime. We often prayer whilst out on our visits and we all create our own prayers in class for lunch time and the end of the day.

We took advantage of a beautiful spring day by having our celebration worship outside. The children commented on how peaveful it made them feel. We had some quiet time whilst listening to the birds sing their beautiful song and reflected on all of the wonderful things that God created. We said prayers of thanks for all of God’s amazing creations.

We had a wonderful Holy week together in school. We enjoyed a variety of Worships as we walked through Holy week together, these included: An easter experience in our church organised and led by our parishioners; an easter pilgrimage in Whitehall Park led by Rev David and Lorraine; an easter church service with each child taking part; Rev David leading whole school and class Worships and our easter bonnet parade with a visit from the Spring chicken.

Some of our collective Worships from this term led by Mr Thomas, Mrs Ham, Rev David, Mr East, our WOW Group and Year 6.

Our Ducklings led a very special Mother’s Day Worship. They invited all of the Mums and Grandmas to thank them for everything that they do. They had a special tea party afterwards and gave them gifts that they had made.

Please have a look at some of our Worships this term. We have had a variety of people leading our Worships including different classes, Rev David, Arch Deacon Michael, Pastor John East from the United Reformed Church, our WOW group, Mrs Thomas and Mrs Ham.

We held a special celebration of life and love to remember Kevin Burnett who sadly passed away last year. Rev David said special prayers and lit candles to symbolise the special memories that we all have of Kevin and loved ones that have passed away. Our choir sang two of Kevin’s favourite songs and some of our previous year 6 class mates of Kevin’s read out their memories. We also unveiled our community defibrillator that was purchased through fundraising in memory of Kevin. we celebrated the achievements of our children in school with our stars and super citizens of the week as well as sports awards and out of school achievements.

Our Year 1 class led a special Chinese New Year Worship. They told us all about the traditions and customs that Chinese people around the world celebrate. We really enjoyed their Chinese songs, dragon dance and story of the great race which told us which different animals became part of the Chinese Zodiac.

We had a wonderful interfaith Worship to end our interfaith week. Each class showcased what they had learnt about their different faith through a variety of ways such as songs, role play, drama, art and dancing. Our whole school family enjoyed Bhangra dancing with our Year 6 children who had learnt about sikhism.

Our Year 6 chicken led our Remembrance Day Worship where our whole school family remembered the soldiers that died or were injured protecting our country. They also visited a special Remembrance service at the cemetery and laid poppy wreaths and prayers on our three war memorials that we maintain. Our choir sang at our Remembrance service in church on Remembrance Sunday, led by Rev David.

Our Christian value for the first Autumn half term is FRIENDSHIP and it was chosen by the WOW group as an important value for starting a new school year. We have created friendship displays around our school and our worships have mainly focused on friendship and how we can be a good friends to each other. We listened and acted out several Bible stories that show friendship and we have learnt from these. We have thought about what a fantastic friend Jesus is and how we can be like Jesus.

Please take a look at some of our Worships this half term. We really enjoy worship and always take part with enthusiasm. We like having time for reflection when we put ourselves in our prayer places.

We all look forward to our weekly celebration worship as we both enjoy seeing what our talented children have achieved both in and out of school. Parents and grandparents are very welcome to come along each Friday from 9.00am. Refreshments are served afterwards by our dedicated parishioners and volunteers.

Our whole school attended a wonderful Crossroads Children’s Celebration at Ewood Park as part of the crossroads mission. We all had a fantastic time watching puppet shows, dancers, singing, dancing and praying. It was a fabulous morning worshipping God.

Mr East led worship with his Muslim friends Aryaan and Shabnum. We learnt all about the Ramadan and Islam. We asked lots of questions as we were all really interested in learning more about the Muslim faith.