'Let your light shine'
Matthew 5.6
As a Christian school, we recognise how important it is that we teach our children about working with and supporting others, both in their own community and communities around the world, in various ways, recognising that not all people grow up with the same experiences of life.
We believe that it is important that our children develop links with their community and also with the wider world, to enable them to have an awareness and appreciation of the world in which we live and the diversity within and beyond our local community.
As a school we support many local, national and international charities, welcoming visitors into school to help our children to develop an understanding of the wider world in which we live and the needs of people in various communities, from our local community to those farther afield.
Our community and charity work gives our children opportunities to put the Christian values which we explicitly teach and model into action. We are extremely proud of how well our children and families engage in charity work to make a real difference to the lives of others.
Our children earn community contribution house points for their efforts to support others either in our local community or the wider world.
Below is an overview of our pre planned outreach work for 2023-2024, which directly links to developing pupil leadership skills and the Christian Value of service.
Before October half term, we were learning about what 'charity' actually means and about the work of some charities whom we support regularly. We learnt about why we held a Macmillan Coffee Morning in school, why we support the local foodbank, what Children in Need is all about and about the Royal British Legion who we support through the Poppy Appeal every year.
This led to the children being challenged to find out about a charity, maybe one they are interested in or have heard about before, maybe one their families know about and support, and to then share this information with their teacher so that the individual classes could vote on which charity to support through whatever ways the children came up with over October half term. We talked lots about how support for a charity could be through donations of money or items, but could also be by donating our time to help in some way or raising awareness of the charity to others.
It was lovely that every class chose a charity to find out more about and pledge to help. We were also delighted that some children went on to support their classes chosen charity in some way.
The PowerPoint below shows the different charities chosen to support and what the children who went on to participate in supporting the charity did to help.
Well done to all who got involved!