Our Pupil Leadership and Faith Team are made up of members from Years 1 to 6, they play an important role in our Church School. The team meet regularly to discuss issues which are important to the children and school, helping to plan activities and future projects that are key to the development and flourishing of our spiritual growth and our mental well-being. We believe in having a strong pupil voice and strongly encourage the children to think of their own ideas about how to promote our school values.
Part of our role includes:
- Promoting our ‘Steps to Success’, the Christian values of Love, Resilience, Forgiveness, Friendship, Respect. By ‘Letting our Light Shine’, we want to be the best that we can be and we want to encourage others to do the same.
- Evaluating and monitoring Collective Worship alongside others.
- Helping to find ways in which we can encourage awe and wonder and explore our spirituality as individuals and together as a whole school. E.g. Prayer Spaces.
- Looking at ways in which we can support mental health and well-being in our school. e.g. Playground equipment.
- Communicating our ideas to the rest of the school and listening to others.
In our 22nd September 2021 Meeting
- We talked about what it meant to be a Pupil Leadership and Faith Team Member. Being a good role model, having good ideas, listening and understanding others, taking part and setting a good example to make our school a better.
- We discussed the area outside the library and we thought about how this could be a Prayer Space linked to the weekly worship with seasonal sensory items and colours and a washing line for prayers, thoughts and reflections. We thought about what we would want to go in this. The cross, the School Prayer and seasonal things. The KS1 children will create a backing on Friday for this with leaf printing.
- Remembrance. Under the canopy we talked about a tree of Remembrance with red ribbons, one for each soldier killed in Gomersal. Children could come lay wreaths and have a short act of remembrance as ribbons were tied. This would be as well as a church visit.
- The area at the back of Year 3 has been spotted as a possible area to develop as a space – perhaps a table (there maybe money in the Eco fund to purchase this) and the tree used in various ways. The area will need cleaning and the ECO Group will be involved with this too.
- We have also been looking at places to put the Big Question outside, allowing children to draw, write their thoughts.
In our 5th November 2021 Meeting
- We talked about selling poppies for Remembrance Day in the School Playground to parents and children.
- Years 4, 5 and 6 have used the ‘Empty Chair’ Prayer space in the Library. Ethan said it was nice to remember people who had died in that way. Gracie said that people appreciated the poem. The Team from classes 1, 2 and 3 will invite others from their classes to go.
- We will work to make a Prayer Shed in the KS2 playground. We will ask children for designs.
In the 12th January 2022 meeting
- We discussed Playtime boxes. The Pupil Leadership and Faith Team will inspect the class playtime boxes and see if any classes can have a reward piece of equipment for looking after their boxes.
- We talked about Prayer spaces – most classes have visited them and children are enjoying them. The Team looked at designs from children for a new prayer shed and we talked about the objects that we thought would be useful and helpful and we talked about why we might have a prayer shed in the playground.
- We discussed whether having an end of day prayer would be helpful. Children felt that there were positives about this: sends us out peacefully, helps us to reflect on the past day, because we are a Church school. Some were worried about time and being rushed.
- We talked about worship in school. Children said they really enjoyed pupils leading worship – it helped building resilience and gave them confidence and courage. They enjoyed singing the hymns and the prayers. Having the Big Question on Monday and going deeper on Tuesday was really helpful. Ethan said that we should come back to the Big Question at the end of the week.
- We talked about having some outside game competitions in the gazebo such as chess and Connect 4 when the weather improves.
March – At the beginning of March we will be monitoring and evaluating our worship.
