Personal Development
We believe that if we open our hearts and minds to the possibilities each and every one of us, no matter how small, can make a difference in our school and beyond. The parable of the Mustard seed teaches us that God can do a lot with a little! Through a range of rich, reflective and creative range of experiences, all of our young children will learn and grow emotionally, personally and spiritually. They will develop a greater understanding of themselves, others, the world and God.
How will the children learn and grow personally and emotionally?
As a Church School with well-embedded school value, we make sure we provide daily opportunities to explore our school values, some planned and some impromptu. We provide a well-planned and progressive PSHE curriculum that incorporates a wide range of aspects related to personal and emotional growth including opportunities for children to:
- recognise, name and manage a range of simple and complex positive and negative emotions, and understand well-being and the factors that contribute to feeling happy
- learn how to stay safe on-line
- learn about fire and road safety
- understand how important it is to speak out to stay safe (NSPCC), know that private parts are private and learn the names of them
- learn how to stay safe by keeping clean, looking after themselves, making an emergency phone call and appreciation of medicines
- learn about friendships and positive relationships as well as engage in regular Anti-Bullying sessions
- develop awareness of being a Young Carer
- appreciate their role as care-takers of the world
- develop an awareness of being healthy and happy in body and mind
- Appreciate and celebrate difference
- Understand that making mistakes is part of the learning and growing process and appreciate the importance of setting personal goals
- Learn about Dementia (we are a Dementia Friendly School)
- Understand British Values (democracy, rule of Law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance)
The children will experience our relationship and sex education programme through The Story Project, a programme designed to use high quality therapeutic texts to support the teaching of progressively planned objectives. Full details can be found in our RSE policy.
How will the children learn and grow spiritually?
As a school we make use of the SPIRIT acronym as a ‘recipe’ for spiritual development as proposed by Rebecca Nye. She suggests that Space, Process, Imagination, Relationship, Intimacy and Trust all contribute to the provision of meaningful spiritual learning experiences. To nurture spirituality:
- Our ‘Places of Peace’, daily acts of worship, Pause Days and outdoor learning provide Space for stillness, wondering, reflecting, questioning and listening. They encourage a sense of mystery through the use of contemplative prayer, symbols and silence and allow children to simply ‘be’.
- Our creative curriculum considers the Process of learning as well as the end result. We provide opportunities for children to express their learning creatively through music, drama, dance and poetry. We have a specialist drama teacher on site that teaches in all classes. We embrace difficult questions though planned opportunities such as the R.E optional study unit ‘Big Questions’ or our topic questions as well as in our day-to-day conversations to help children try to make sense of the world and provide a safe framework within which they can argue, question and explore.
- Our children use their Imagination to facilitate a sense of empathy and emotion and to allow children to reflect and make meaning for themselves. We use colour emotion visuals and emotional coaching techniques to promote emotional development.
- We can build strong Relationships with each other in our small school as people journeying together to understand each other and faith.
- We foster Intimacy through listening to music and singing worship; signing is a well-established and enjoyable way of doing this.
- We have a value of trust so that children and adults learn and grow together, listen to each other and show mutual respect.
