Collective Worship & Religious Education

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart.’ – Colossians

Collective Worship at Baden-Powell and St Peter’s Junior School

Acts of Collective Worship are held every day as part of school life at Baden-Powell and St Peter’s. We come together in various worship groups across the week, including lower and upper key stages, year groups and as individual classes.  Many people across our school lead Worship each week: our Senior Leadership Team, Year Leaders, teachers and pupils all contribute. We also welcome Christian visitors from St Peter’s Church and the local area.

Through our link to St Peter’s Church we are also fortunate to be able to hold whole-school Worship in St Peter’s Church at various times throughout the year to celebrate Harvest, Christmas and Easter. Part of our Year 6 Leavers celebrations are also held at the Church.

Our Collective Worship Team (made up of children from Year Six) work hard with our Collective Worship Leader (Miss Lewis) to plan and deliver Class Worship to their peers on a bi-weekly basis. This is a fantastic opportunity for our pupils to have a direct say in the worship at Baden-Powell and develop leadership and communication skills. Each Year Six class is actively involved in evaluating Acts of Worship each week and reflect on the message and theme of day. 

Our Collective Worship Themes each run for a half term and are planned around each of our school’s Christian Values that are embedded in our ethos: friendship, aspiration, respect, resilience and compassion, as well as other Christian values such as hope and dignity and stories and morals from the Bible.

We work hard to ensure that the British Values of Democracy, Rule of Law, Individual Liberty, Mutual Respect and Tolerance of Faiths are embedded in to our themes alongside engaging and interesting aspects of cultural knowledge that develop our pupils as well-rounded, informed individuals.

Around our school, we reflect on and celebrate our Acts of Worship in reflection areas and prayer corners that our Collective Worship Team are responsible and through displays that show each half-termly theme. We are proud to have our Bible quotes that link to each Core Value painted on our walls around the school – see if you can spot all five when you visit us!

Parents do have the right to withdraw their children from worship by informing the Head Teacher in writing.

Religious Education at Baden-Powell and St Peter’s Junior School

By following the Locally greed Syllabus and the Understanding Christianity Scheme, our R.E. curriculum is investigative and enquiry-based in nature. Each unit of work is planned around a key question. The learning opportunities provided allow pupils to develop knowledge and understanding of religion, express ideas and communicate with others about their religious learning and to explore and respond to human experience.

The goal of the Understanding Christianity units is to develop ‘theologically literate pupils who are able to make sense of religious texts and various interpretations.’  From engaging in these units, pupils will be able ‘to understand the impact of beliefs in the lives of Christians and make connections to wider learning and to themselves.’

Each unit of work is carefully planned to develop the following areas that will support them in their learning of R.E. and across other curriculum areas.

• Skills: interpretation, empathy, investigation, application, discernment, analysis, evaluation, expression, reflection and synthesis
• Attitudes: curiosity, appreciation, wonder, critical awareness, open-mindedness and self-awareness

Each year group teach their half termly RE topic/module within one RE topic week in which the children’s Discovery lessons are all dedicated to the RE curriculum. This provides concentrated teaching, building on knowledge and understanding across several days and allows for a more creative approach. Pupils record and complete work in their topic Discovery books, where appropriate and, due to the more creative or discursive nature of many of our RE lessons, each year group also completes a ‘Big Book’ that runs alongside the children’s personal exercise books. These Big Books capture reflections, thoughts, whole class projects and photographs of more creative lessons to ensure that we have a place that can reflect the work that goes on in lessons and act as a reference point for the children.

We want our pupils to have opportunities to encounter local faith communities through visits to local places of worship or visits from members of local faith communities.  In particular, St Peter's Church is an integral resource.

Children focus on the following key topics or modules in each year group. Where possible, these areas have been selected to complement the other Discovery learning topics being taught in that half term.