Children’s Personal Development is central to the ethos at St Mary’s. In order to ensure we live out our vision of “being the best we can be” we focus on providing opportunities to develop the ‘whole child’. This is driver behind many of the key priorities across the school as well as central to our work to develop children’s spirituality. We seek out opportunities to help children think ‘beyond themselves’ and in the context of our Church of England foundations; for children to consider their relationship to the world around them, as well as to develop a relationship with God.
For this reason, at St Mary’s we have a large focus on providing opportunities for courageous advocacy for our children and for them to develop their experience of being involved in social justice initiatives.
Each class has taken on a ‘social justice’ project this year:
Maple Class (EY) are linking with the elderly in the village to reduce loneliness by attending regular village lunches to sing songs and perform poems and share their terms learning.
Cherry Class (Year 1/2) have adopted an elephant called Toto through a link with one of our governors and parents at Sheldrake Reserve in Australia.
Willow class are working with our volunteer Mrs Rowberry who runs our lunchtime club ‘wild life explorers’ to follow the ‘Better Planet Schools’ project. This term they have focused in on Endangered animals and will later on in the year will be working with the ‘Children’s Forest’ team and a local land owner to develop a Community Orchard in Hartfield.
Lilac Class have connected with the organisation ‘Starfish Malawi’ run by Chris Knott. They have linked with their link school in Mikute LEA. They have already met with Chris Knott (the founder of Starfish Malawi) and discussed ways to begin to link up with the children at Mikute school and get to know what life is like for them.
Watch this space for more information! If you would like to know more about Starfish Malawi, please visit their website: starfishmalawi.com
