R.E and Collective Worship Newsletter Summer 1 2017
Mrs Stephanie Bryant Head Teacher Mrs Rebecca Purchase St. Marks Governor Meet the team! Mrs Charlotte Walker St. Marks Governor (chair) These are the lovely people working for R.E and Collective Worship at St. Marks School Rev. Kathy St. Marks Church Mrs Zoe Dodd Head of Collective Worship Mrs Ruth Pitts Head of R.E
Reverend Kathy has been working hard with our fantastic year 6 prefects to write a school prayer for St. Marks. This prayer will be used during Collective Worships. Dear God Thank you for all that You have given us, and for our school where we can learn and grow together. Please help us to make our school a place where everyone feels they belong, where we are friends, and we respect and care for each other. Give us a love of learning and help us to become the people that You have made us to be. May the wisdom of Jesus shine out from our lives and school into the world around us. Amen.
R.E and Collective Worship Newsletter Summer 1 2017 We would like to keep you informed of what we are busy doing at St. Marks School in terms of our R.E lessons, our Collective Worship, visits to local places of worship, the charity work children of St. Marks are doing, as well as our important links to St. Marks Church and the St. Marks community as a whole. In R.E this term will be studying: Year R: Special Clothes Why are clothes important? Hinduism Year1: Special places Why are Christian churches/hindu temples special? Visit to a Hindu Temple planned. Year 2: God Ideas about God Christianity Year 3/4: Symbols The tree as a symbol Judaism Year 5: God Islam and Christianity We are looking forward to showing you our work next issue! Year 6: No RE this term (SATS)
Collective Worship At St. Marks we have a whole school Collective Worship in the main school hall. The hall has been undertaking a refurbishment to ensure it is a suitable and welcoming place for worship. It has had new blinds, fresh paint and updated displays! On Tuesdays and Wednesdays we have Collective Worship in our classes to explore the themes of the week and to discuss our school values of Love, Equality, Inclusion and Respect. This term our themes will be: Daniel and the Lions respect New school prayer New School value linked bible verses Love, Inclusion, Equality & Respect. The Trinity -Bible verse: 2 Corinthians 13:14 On Monday the 29 th of March, We all went to St James Church and it was fantastic! It was so fun when we did all the activities. Edison When we got to St. James Church, there was a huge cross with rocks underneath on a tray. With them, we had to write our hopes and dreams onto it. on mine, I wrote to become a professional athlete. We were given a quiz about Easter eggs, Alfie with questions such as: How many yolks did the largest egg contain? After that Reverend Kathy came and told us About the events of Jesus last week. Keita What s been happening in St. Marks? Student voice. St. James Church Visit Year 6 I enjoyed the lost tomb the most because it was fun going inside the dark tomb. Alex We had the Last Supper with bread and wine. Secondly, we went to the garden where Jesus prayed before he died. We listened to a poem and made a clay model of the cross. Ronan After the trip I had less questions to ask myself. I liked the trip and because I m Catholic I had heard a slightly different story from my Polish Church. Konrad
The foundation governors at St Marks are appointed by the church. Our role is the same as that of the other governors, but we also work to ensure the Christian Ethos of the school. We currently have three foundation governors, and one vacancy; so if you know anyone who might be interested in this role, please get in contact. It s great to have Reverend Kathy in post at St Marks Church. She started in September and has already made a really positive contribution towards the life of the school. Becky Purchase attends St James Road Methodist Church. She is an experienced teacher and school leader as well as being very involved in local church. Charlotte Walker is also the Chair of Governors. She has been involved in church governance for 15 years and has three children that have attended St Marks. This year the foundation governors have being doing a lot of work with the school leaders looking at Collective Worship and the school values. We are passionate about celebrating the multicultural and multi faith character of St Marks whilst developing the Christian ethos through the core values of Love, Respect and Equality & Inclusion. Charlotte Walker Message from Rev. Kathy Well, it s been over 7 months since my family and I moved into the vicarage at St Mark s, and we ve enjoyed getting to know the area, the church and particularly St Mark s School community. I love the fact that our church has such an amazing, diverse, thriving school community to be involved with. At St Mark s Church we see it as our role to serve the school community where we can. We look forward to finding more ways to work together, helping our two communities to be the best they can be. I ve had great fun coming in to school, taking some of our collective worship sessions, and helping the children to understand and experience some of the rich spiritual heritage of the Church of England as we ve explored important times in the church calendar like Harvest, Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter together. The children always inspire me with their insight and depth of thinking about meaningful subjects. So what s St Mark s Church like, you might be wondering? Well, you ll always find a warm welcome at St Mark s Church, our services are relaxed, friendly and rather informal, because we want people to feel at home. We re a bit like a big family, where we re all different but we all belong (sounds a lot like our school!) We meet every Sunday at 10am for a worship service, and on the first Sunday of every month we have a service that s a bit shorter, more interactive and family friendly. Do come and give us a try! If you d like to get in touch with me for any reason, I d love to hear from you, and you can get me on 023 8057 1493 or Kathy.stmarks@icloud.com