RE

Subject Leader: Mrs Thompson and Miss Wheeler

Our Lady & St Gerard’s uses the ‘Come and See' Religious education programme as the basis of our religious teaching. During the course of the year the children will also study another faith. The ‘Come and See' programme forms the basis for the curriculum but other materials, texts and artefacts are used to enrich the religious education of the children.

The curriculum will also be supported and enriched by:

Children being engaged in the preparation and presentation of masses in church and in school.
Children preparing and presenting assemblies.
Children engaging in collective worship at a special focal point in classrooms.
The close contact between the parish and school.
Children’s involvement in various aspects of community life in the parish.

The 5 W's

The 5W's ensure that areas of significant importance such as the Catholic life of the school, teaching and learning are recognised and supported.

Everyone here at Our Lady and St Gerard’s School work together to support and develop the Catholic life of the school through the 5 W’s:

Come and See Overview

Collective Worship

Collective Worship is an essential part of the daily life of our school. As the children move through the schools they develop the skills to plan their own collective worship and then in Year 6 they can become part of our GIFT Chaplaincy team and support others in their spiritual journey.

Special Places to Pray at Home

Worship Team

Our Worship Team work on a number of projects aimed at supporting everyone in our community to live by The Gospel Values. Each class has two worship leaders who meet on a regular basis. The purpose of our pupil worship team is to promote friendship, love and respect in school and in the wider community and to help to uphold the school mission statement.

Our Worship Team will undertake the following activities during the year:

Planning and delivering collective worship to the younger children
Helping to prepare class and whole school masses
Taken an active role in assemblies
Introduce the Alternative Advent Countdown collection for The Foxton Centre
Produce art work for the prayer room and displays around school
Decided on the school’s Lenten charity- CAFOD – and made posters promoting the campaign
Setting up prayer stations and helping the younger children use them.

Our School Worship Leaders

Our Liturgical Year

Harvest Festival

In October our children celebrate the Harvest Festival by bringing in food to distribute to local people and food banks. The church is always beautifully decorated and we welcome the families to join us to celebrate the harvest. Our children have collected food throughout the first week of October and this will be distributed to New Day Church Food Hub.

The KS2 Worship Leaders helped to lead a prayer in Assembly to ensure we knew the importance of the Harvest Festival and we could have a moment in prayer together.

October - The Month of the Rosary

Remembrance Day

On the 11th November the whole school join in prayer to remember those who gave their lives for us. The children in Year 2 were asked to make a poppy as a homework task and they produced a wonderful display in the hall. Thank you to all the parents who worked with their child to make a poppy.

Christmas Preparations

The children had a wonderful time preparing for Christmas this year. Usually our EYFS and KS1 children perform the Christmas story but this was not possible in 2020. Instead, each class read part of ther Christmas story and sang a Carol. It was lovely to hear the children singing in different languages and using Makaton to perform the actions. Usually our children visit local venues to sing Christmas Carols and we hope to be able to do this in 2021.

As part of our Christmas preparations we think of those less fortunate than ourselves. In 2020 the children brought in food and gifts for Foxton House.