We reviewed friendship as our theme and discussed how ‘love thy neighbour’ means caring for everyone around us and always trying to be a good friend.

The theme of friendship links to our new vision value to ‘LOVE’.

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On Tuesday, the Hedgehogs were treated to a story from the Bible, read by Reverend Phil.

Ezra said “In the story, the man couldn’t walk and they had to dig a hole to help Jesus get to him and help him.”

Reverend Phil and the children talked about the theme of friendship—which is our topic for the term!

Albie said “Friends help each other.”

Chloe said “Everybody is important, we should help them.”

Sorrel said “God wants us to be safe and good to our friends.”

What incredible lessons to take away from such a lovely story!

Thank you for sharing

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In Forest School this week, children in Year 5 and 6 chose to re-create the school’s 4 new values on the Forest floor. They recalled the 4 values – Love, Strength, Wisdom and Truth – and created designs using the symbols we associate with them.

It was great to see the children engaging with the new school values in such a creative way!

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September 2020: We are currently renewing and revising our school vision and the values that lead and support policy and ethos within the school.

On 12th September 2020, our school Ethos Committee met to discuss the vision and values and how we can ensure they are clear, succinct and fully endorse the ethos of East Hoathly school. Our Ethos Committee consist of Miss Lewis (Head of School), Mrs Healy (RE Lead and Assistant Head), Reverend Phil, Lindsay Wiggens (Governor), Jan Gough (Governor and experienced SIAMs inspector), Mandy Watson (Governor and Senior School Improvement Advisor for the Diocese of Chichester) and the role of the committee is to promote the Ethos vision and values of the school.

During the meeting, the committee agreed on the teaching from the Bible that we wanted to capture in order to create new values for the school, and then defined these using quotes from the Bible:

From this point, SLT within the school began to consider the wording of the federation. For this, we considered what was most important for us to ensure is clear about the vision for our school. We used some wording from the current vision and took inspiration from the Church of England’s vision for education. The vision for East Hoathly then became:

In our Church school, we learn through our values of Love, Strength, Wisdom and Truth. We aim for the highest standards and believe that by building a strong community, we can take care of everyone’s wellbeing, achieving fullness of life.

“With God all things are possible” Matthew 19:26

On Tuesday 29th September 2020, Mrs Healy introduced the new draft vision and values to the parents. Parents were invited to comment on how well the vision and values support the ethos of the school, how they thought the vision and values could be introduced to children, and how they thought links to the Bible could be further explored.

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See our Harvest Festival in the local press:

• uckfieldnews.com/east-hoathly-pupils-hold-virtual-harvest-festival
• www.uckfieldfm.co.uk/2020/local-news/primary-school-celebrate-harvest-festival-virtually

Watch our video:

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This week, some children in Owl Class performed in their own ‘Open the Book’ assembly for their class mates!

Before the pandemic, all of the children in the school looked forward to Wednesday assemblies as they were invited to watch and take part in a dramatised Bible story every week. It is lovely to see the children still taking part in acting out the stories for each other—even if the circumstances are a little different!

The children acted out the story of ‘‘A Favourite Son becomes a slave’ while focussing on the theme of friendship. The children discussed who was a friend to Joseph in the story. Owl Class said “We’ve learnt from the story to be kind and try and be happy for people around you and support them, rather than be jealous.” The children then discussed how the story could impact their lives and how the story could help them to be better friends.

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This term we are learning about the Christian Value of ‘Friendship’. We had a virtual assembly welcoming everyone back to school and have added to our spiritual journals by reflecting on what makes a good friend. Some of the ideas included supportive, kind, caring, understanding, fun and helpful!

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This term’s Christian Value was courage and through collective worship and RE lessons, we ask the children how they have shown these values throughout the week.

Sara-Maria in Year 1 said “I will be brave doing the running race.”

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Our Easter Service on Friday 5th April was really great. Reverend Phil asked the children about the feelings of people at different times during the Easter story. Each class did a wonderful depiction of each part of the Easter story. Thank you to the families who came to join our service.

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This week, the school was visited by Karen Bye, our Diocese School Improvement Partner, who looked around the school and through the children’s RE books.

She was happy to see a lot of high quality work and fantastic learning in the books. She also enjoyed seeing our displays developing.

 

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Come and see our new Values display! It links the values of our School Vision to verses and stories from the Bible.

Thank you to Miss Pitt for donating cushions and Mr and Dr Rattray for donating a sofa for the inside reflection space.

Mr Herdman will be painting it soon. We cannot wait to share the new space with you!

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Watch out for a new display coming soon that will tell you more about the Bible links to our School Vision.

Thank you to people who have donated unwanted furniture to our Reflection space! We are looking forward to putting a photo of the completed area in the newsletter soon!

If you have unwanted blankets, cushions or any other knick-knacks that you would like to donate, please speak to Miss Purcell.

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We have moved our outdoor prayer space so that it is now round the side of the theatre. This is so that this can be a calm place to go for reflection and prayer.

Following Open the Book collective worship this week, Isabella said “We learnt about when John baptised Jesus and others. Open the Book always bring the Bible stories alive and I love singing the songs.”

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Our new Christian Value that we are exploring this term is ‘Compassion’.

Summer says “This means being really kind and thinking of others before yourself.” We will explore different aspects of this.

Each class has a spiritual journal. In these the children write how the Christian values have impacted on their lives.

All are welcome to have a look at the one that is on the Collective Worship display.

 

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On Thursday 14th February, we had an assembly presented by Mark from the Charity ‘Christian Aid.’ We want to learn more about global Christianity so he was able to share this with us.

Mark shared that in the Gospels in the Bible, the second most important thing Jesus talked about was giving help and freedom to the poor. Mark explained that Christian Aid believe that Jesus wants  everyone to help those less fortunate than ourselves.

They aim to: stop poverty, help people and challenge things that hurt the poor. ‘Christian aid’ do this by creating projects that provide clean water by filtering and pumping water to villages. They help people after a crisis like an earthquake or hurricane to rebuild their houses. They also challenge people in power e.g. to use solar and wind power.

The reason they do this is to keep people safe and help them to survive. They want to follow Jesus’  example and believe that they should follow the Gospels and help the poor. This way the values of Christianity can spread around the globe.

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The children enjoyed Open the Book this week! The children saw a rendition of “Daniel in the Lion’s Den” and Zach in Year 5 said “my favourite part was when God sent angels to protect him.”

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Following on from our Vision afternoon, we have put quotes from the children and photos up as part of our updated Christian Values tree. You are welcome to come and have a look!

The RE Council are working with Miss Purcell to create a prayer space in the library where children can go in for quiet reflection, writing prayers and having some calm time. If you have any spare fabric or cushions to add to this space, it would be much appreciated.

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Next week, we will be looking forward to our Christingle Service.

While making their Christingles, the children will be learning about what each part of it means.

The service will be on Wednesday 19th December in the Church from 2pm.

We hope to see you there!

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Karen Bye from the Diocese visited our school this week. As a result of her visit, she said “the RE Council are good advocates for the school and are able to articulate the School’s vision and the Christian distinctiveness of the school and how it impacts on their lives. The children are keen to be more involved with worship and enjoy the ‘Open the Book’ session.”

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