East Hoathly Church of England Primary School
Achievement for All, Learning Together, Learning for Life
On Thursday we held a Progress and Learning assembly as a school community. The children came together with a different year group and shared some of their learning so far. They were able to discuss with each other their topics, favourite bits of work and consider how they might improve their skills this term. They shared what they liked about each other’s work, and what they were excited about for the coming term!
This Term we are thinking about Respect. We will be exploring the stories of Equally treated (James 2:1-4) and Tame It (James 3). We will also be singing ‘Shine Jesus Shine’ and learning the ‘Respect’.
In Term 5 we explored the Christian Value of Friendship, we thought about the bible passages linked to Barnabas and Paul and Davide and Jonathon.
We also learnt the song ‘Sing a Song in Unison’ thinking about how we can work together to for the better.
We have been thinking about how our lives our impacted and what we think about following the collective worship sessions, some of the children shared what learning about Forgiveness and hope has helped them to do or think about.
Herbie – “It encouraged us to think about moving past any issues or fall outs and how we can help others like our buddies become friends”
Sara – “We thought lots about encouraging our friends to make the right choices” and “sometimes we can be friends but not want to do the same things and that’s still okay.
Dylan “Father Jeremy encourages us to be kind”
Joseph “ Being kind and a good friend shows others you care about them”
We held a Vision and Values focused Awe & Wonder Day where we looked at the biblical theology behind our school vision. We started by thinking about the bible passage in which it states: “With God all things are possible” Matthew 19:36 and how this encourages us to think about God’s teachings and values.
The children were then split into key stage groups to rotate around different workshops which would encourage us to think about the stories behind our values and how the messages within these can impact on our everyday lives.
Nursery also took part in the day, spending time learning about our value of love, the story of the Good Samaritan, and how he helped others. They acted out the story and thought about being good friends.
In the art workshop the children created art pieces centred around each of the values. Each group focused on a different value, discussing the story from which it came, what it meant to the children as individuals and how we might show it within our community. We then experimented with different techniques to create our masterpieces!
In another group, we considered the value of Wisdom. We read the story ‘Soloman asks God for Wisdom.’ Then we talked about the different ways we use our knowledge and wisdom in everyday life.
When we focused on the value of strength through the story of Ruth. We learnt how Ruth persevered and showed the value of strength by staying with her mother in law Naomi. The children collated words that mean ‘strength’. They then used these words to create acrostic poetry for the words Ruth and strength.
Father Jeremy also ran a workshop helping us to think about how we are the stones that build our path and our road in life. The children created their own stone gift, sharing the strengths that they each bring and give to our school community. This helped them to think about the path they are taking and what they contribute.
You can also see our fantastic learning from this day on display in our conservatory waiting room.
In Term 4 the Christian Values we explored was Forgiveness and Hope. We have explored the bible stories, The Unforgiving Servant and the Easter Story.
We have been thinking about how our lives our impacted and what we think about following the collective worship sessions, some of the children shared what learning about Forgiveness and hope has helped them to do or think about.
“Forgiveness is important, sometimes it can be hard but you can’t move on if you don’t forgive” – Herbie
“It helped me to think about forgiving others and at times that means we need to be brave” – Sara
“We heard about the king who forgave the servant, it helped me remember to forgive” Joseph
“Sometimes people make mistakes and its helpful to forgive and then help them learn”. Charlie
This term the Christian Value we have been exploring is Courage. We have explored the bible stories, Ester the Brave, Joshua and The Walls of Jericho and linked courage to the story of Chinese new year.
We have also been learning the song ‘This is Me’ from the musical the Greatest Showman and linked this to being brave and courageous like those in the film.
We have been thinking about how our lives our impacted and what we think about following the collective worship sessions, some of the children shared what learning about courage has helped them to do or think about.
“To try my best even when things are tricky, and not giving up on things I really want to achieve even if I am finding it hard”. – A
“It has helped me to be brave and notice others in the playground”. – D
“I have tried harder in some of the learning I have found harder”. – C
“Trying harder in my literacy as I find that hard sometimes”. – M
“Being brave at my first football training as I was new, but I still went”. – S
“I think it has helped me think about trust and bravery when I am doing lifts in my dancing”. – O
“To be brave and not give up no matter what happens”. – G
We have updated our Church School and Mawali School Link displays to become more interactive. We share our termly Christian value, which we learn about in collective worship and each week we have a big question to encourage our children to think creatively and about others. We also update any news we get from our link school in Malawi.
Our Year 6 leavers attended a the Diocese of Chichester Year 6 Leavers’ Service for all Church of England Primary schools at All Saints Church in Crowborough.
During the service, the children sang with the other schools and listened to a short bible message by a member of the Diocese of Chichester.
It was a lovely occasion to reflect back on the children’s 7 years of primary school and look forward to their new adventures as they move on to secondary school.
We are phenomenally proud of our Class of 2022, we miss you all immensely and wish you all the best in your new schools.
We have learnt the Malawi National anthem in English and in Chichewa languages.
Miss Lewis is in WhatsApp contact with the headteacher of our link school, Mikute, other school leaders in Malawi and the leaders of Starfish.
We have sent over the recording of East Hoathly School singing the Malawi National anthem and our friends in Malawi thought the children were fantastic.
Here are their messages…
At our Harvest festival on 13th October, the school had our final service with Reverend Phil. Phil has been our vicar for 17 years and we wanted to mark his retirement with a special performance! Well done to Beatrice and Emily for braving the solos!
On Monday 1st March, we had an Easter Comparison afternoon. This was part of our work towards a Global Neighbours Award.
The Nursery bubble compared Easter traditions between the UK and Bermuda. The children found out that to celebrate Easter in Bermuda, Christians make kites and take part in egg and spoon races. The children also enjoyed a very popular tradition from the UK—hot cross buns!
The EYFS/KS1 bubble, compared Easter traditions in Spain and the UK. They discovered that the egg represents new life and in Spain, they decorate eggs and roll them down a hill. Also, in the USA they have egg and spoon competitions. The children and adults had an egg and spoon race as well as decorating eggs.
Sophie commented “In Spain, they put Ash on their foreheads like Christians in the UK on Ash Wednesdays before Easter. This is to ask Jesus for forgiveness.”
The KS2 bubble found out about how lots of different countries celebrate Easter. They discovered in Sweden, Easter is really important and they decorate houses (like Christmas in the UK but with Egg decorations.) The children had a go at using felt tips to decorate their own boiled eggs! We also found out that in Spain, strong people carry intricately decorated wooden boxes with depictions of the Easter story along the streets to commemorate Easter. For Christians in Spain, Easter is the most important celebration of the year.”
Great work everyone! What a fun way to try other countries’ Easter traditions!
This Thursday, East Hoathly school was joined by some Governors as we celebrated Christingle.
Each class sang a song from their Nativity and Reverend Phil led everyone in prayer. There were some Owl children who read prayers too. Christingle is a time for us all to reflect upon the life of Jesus and what his birth means for us.
The children enjoyed making their Christingle for the service and it was lovely to see Owl children helping their buddies in Hedgehog class!
It was lovely to see everybody on the screen for the service! Merry Christmas, all!
This week, we began filming for the school’s Nativity. The children have been amazing at rehearsing their lines and practising their songs. We hope to be able to show you the final product soon! Thank you to Mrs Thatcher for filming and editing the play.
As we are now finishing the term on Thursday 17th December, the Christingle service will take place on Thursday morning at 9.30am—we look forward to be able to share photos of our service with you.
All the children within school have created Christmas cards for the residents of Lydfords care home, helping to spread a bit of Christmas cheer to others.
Hedgehogs also created cards for the residents at Freshfield Nursing home in Seaford, where Miss Denney’s Mum is a nurse. The residents loved their cards with one resident being moved to happy tears!
On Thursday, Hedgehog class put on their coats and hi-vis jackets to take a walk down to Lydfords Care Home to deliver Christmas cards to the residents. Once the cards were delivered, the Hedgehogs continued their walk to the Post Office to post their letters to Santa.
Thank you to the parents who joined us for our first trip! Hedgehogs were very sensible walking along the road and were very excited to post their letters!
Thank you to Mr Martin Lawrence for creating this piece of artwork that reflects our school’s vision so beautifully.
The children had great fun spotting their class’ animals on the poster!
Last Friday, the children learnt all about how their donations can help other children. The children also enjoyed wearing their pyjamas to school—what a novelty! Each class had to decorate their class animal in coins.
With the donations from the children and staff, we managed to raise a very impressive £157! Well done everyone!
This week, the children looked into the Bible stories associated with our new school values.
Hedgehog Class learnt about the value of love through The Parable of the Good Samaritan.
The Squirrels learnt about the value of truth through The Annunciation—where the angel brought a ‘true’ message to Mary of events that would happen in the future.
Fox Class learnt about the value of wisdom through the story of Solomon asking God for wisdom.
The Owls learnt about the value of strength through the story of Ruth—who showed great strength in character when helping others.
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’.
Miss Lewis sat in the Nursery garden with the children to read the next part of the story of Adam and Eve.
We found out that Adam and Eve broke the rules that God had given them and did not make good choices.
We talked about what the rules were in nursery and Leo, Paige and Lucas remembered that our rules are “Love, Strength, Wisdom and Truth.”
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
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!
We look forward to using some stories from the Bible to help us to explore the vision and values further later in the term.
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.
See our Harvest Festival in the local press:
Watch our video:
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.
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!
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.”
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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!
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.”
