Around our Schools

Saint Augustine, Nottingham

In September 2021, at St Augustine’s Catholic Primary and Nursery Voluntary Academy, we introduced a new initiative based on our Gospel Values. This initiative involves children being nominated and awarded a Values Badge by their Class Teacher, if they are demonstrating one or more of our Gospel Values, which are:

SERVE LOVE FORGIVENESS COURAGE JUSTICE COMPASSION HOPE

It is such a positive reward scheme that recognises the children who regularly demonstrate our Gospel Values. Furthermore, it acknowledges the quality of the children’s character too. They have responded so well and are desperate to achieve all 7 Value Badges!

This is what the children think about our Value Badges:

“The badges have changed St Augustine’s because they encourage us to really think about our actions and encourage us to behave using the Gospel Values.” “We are like the trees and the badges are the fruit. A St A’s, we strive to be fruitful trees as we represent the Gospel Values.”

We’re delighted with how all the children at St Augustine’s have responded to our Gospel Values initiative.

Saint Joseph, Langwith Junction

In our efforts to increase our care for our earth, the Sisters decided to invest in a bee hive. In late June, the hive was placed in an alcove in the church cemetery beside our house. The bees were obtained from Buckfast because they are gentle and more acclimatised to England.

It is amazing to see the bees working in our garden and queueing to get into the hive to take back their nectar. We are looking forward to harvesting the honey.

More Bee-friendly bushes and flowers have been planted in our garden and in the cemetery – including over 400 crocus bulbs curtesy of St.Joseph’s school children.

St. John Chrysostom reminds us that: “The bee is more honoured than other animals, not because it labours, but because it labours for others.”

MartinMarklyn has a 5 minute video in which he parallels the bees and us as Church. Its called Be The Bee https://youtu.be/ZxDesicz62g

Saint Mary, Boston

How wonderful Advent 2021 has been for the community of Boston St Mary’s! With four live performances of our Key Stage One Nativity, a successful outdoor Christmas Fayre, an entertaining pantomime trip and our first trip back to St Mary’s Church for Mass since 2019, we have been incredibly fortunate. We have also been working hard on our charitable giving and have been pleased to put together a number of delicious Christmas treat boxes which have been distributed to members of our own community to ensure everybody has a happy Christmas.

During our Advent term, we have also been getting to know our new parish priest, Father Dominic, who has been into school on many occasions to support our pupils with their RE learning and to offer Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament.

Saint Mary, Brigg

The Chaplaincy Team and Mini-Vinnies from St Mary’s with their Harvest Collection for the local foodbank.

Saint Hugh, Lincoln

In October 2021, Bishop Patrick Mc Kinney wrote a letter to the children in all schools across the Nottingham Diocese, asking them to reflect on Pope Francis’ invitation for the Church to question the Synodality. Children at St Hugh’s have thought about and reflected on the questions sent from Bishop Patrick, these included: What’s your dream is for God’s Church? How would

you like it to look? What do you like about God’s Church? What would make it better? Who would you like to invite to church? The children initially responded on post-it notes and their ideas were then developed into a collaborative piece of Art work.

Saint Mary, Grantham

We at St. Mary’s Grantham have truly embraced the gift of music this year. It has been a delight to all be able to be back in the hall to share Choral Worship ‘live’ again, rather than over Teams. The whole school community look forward to our Wednesday morning worship, where we share a wonderful mix of traditional hymns, modern worship songs and prayerful, gentle musical offerings. As each of our classes are named after a different saint, we have even written our own version of Matt Maher’s ‘Litany’, in which we take turns as classes to call and respond as we ask our saints to pray for us. Sung without accompaniment, it is simply breathtaking in its beauty and simplicity.

So many children are shining through their singing – so much so that Mrs Brewell has had to introduce her ‘Super Singer’ stickers! They are prized indeed! But it’s not just singing that we’ve been up to at St. Mary’s. We have a superb collection of new musical instruments and both the staff and children have been eager to try them out. Already, we have been extremely impressed at the music being produced – there is nothing like playing an instrument to bring together all the elements of musical learning, so we have great hopes for this as we move forward – watch this space!

As our whole-school display says, ‘We are all notes, but together we are a symphony.’ With God’s grace, we will make a sweet, sweet sound for our Lord.

Holy Rosary, Stapenhill

The Advent term of 2021 has been a busy one for the community at Holy Rosary. This term saw the launch of our Community wide Food Bank Friday, Feast day Celebrations, visits from local MP’s to promote opportunities for pupils to

have their voice heard and the chance to return to celebrate Mass with our parish community. Pupils have been active in their faith and vocation through leading Liturgies focused on the SYNOD; encouraging their peers to explore their vision for the future of the church. A whole school re-focus of our mission statement is one of the key priorities for Holy Rosary this year. Our mission to ‘Grow ambitious and empowered individuals through an exceptional curriculum, compassionate support and a catholic community is at the heart of all we do. We were delighted to receive recognition of our school’s catholicity in our recent DCI inspection in which the school was awarded an overall good with outstanding practise acknowledge in Catholic Life and Collective worship. Inspectors said:

‘Holy Rosary is a good and effective school. Here, outstanding Catholic Life and Collective Worship is demonstrated. The school’s character behaviours, and the gospel values chosen, permeate every aspect of school life and are confidently articulated by pupils, staff, parents and governors alike: everyone concerned is visibly proud to be part of this school community’

As part of their Eco Curriculum, children from Holy Trinity school in Newark have written to Boris Johnson to persuade him to look after our planet and distribute funds fairly to poorer countries. The school is working towards achieving Eco-Schools Green Flag – acknowledging, rewarding and celebrating the ecological achievements of young people . The children have also been learning about the impact of litter on our oceans and have made their own pledges to cut down plastic pollution. The school also joined in Cafod’s ‘Eyes of the World’ campaign where 58,000 children and young people told the UK government that the eyes of the world were on them at COP26.

Our Lady of Good Counsel, Sleaford

This year, Our Lady of Good Counsel Primary School in Sleaford has been able to run two great liturgy teams, both of which have dedicated their time and love to help those in our school community and beyond to our neighbours in need too. Our Shining Stars liturgy team have continued their great work this year in school, by leading some lovely EmbRACE liturgies- tackling racism, writing weekly prayers to lead in school, creating Kindness Advent calendars for all classes and making a giant Advent box calendar for donations to the local food bank! We have also introduced the Mini Vinnies this year who have led a bake sale to raise funds for Children in Need and sent

Christmas cards out to local care homes. All children across our school have helped in their contributions to help support so many worthwhile causes and to top it off this term, pupils have learnt more about the themes of “Encounter” and created a beautiful path in our school with their footprints to take steps with Jesus in following our Christian Values. Of course, we ended the Christmas term with a focus on Jesus, putting him at the center of our hearts and minds as KS1 performed a beautiful nativity “Born in a barn” and KS2 sang carols by candlelight.

Saints Peter and Paul, Lincoln

Remembrance Service: On Wednesday 10th November we came together as a school community to commemorate the fallen. It is 80 Years since the bombing of Pearl Harbour. Our theme was allies and our virtue was reflection. A special thanks to Canon Geoffrey, Cadets, choir, chaplaincy team and any member of our school community who helped to make the service a reflective and contemplative occasion for all those who attended.

Turning our Concern into Action This Advent: Our students have been led by the chaplaincy team to turn their concern into action. This term we have raised money for CAFOD, Faith in Families, our ‘Bee Happy’ outdoor chapel project and donated Christmas dinner, food essentials and presents to seven families in need of support this Christmas. As well as multiple families each week who use the SSPP Foodbank.

A special thank you to the parishioners of St Peter and St Paul church who donated a vast amount of food since we began and in a particular this Advent. The motto of SSPP Foodbank is “Through love serve one another.” Galatians 5:13

May the virtue of love continue to guide us to serve the community.

At St Bede’s, we commit ourselves to love, respect and serve one another as disciples of Jesus Christ which allows us to bear witness to the call from Bishop Patrick: develop your pupils to be missionary disciples. Part of The St Bede’s Way is about seeing the face of Christ in everyone to encourage our pupils to be charitable in their actions. Each week, the pupils are challenged to live out the message of the Gospel in accordance with the school virtues in order to become virtue literate and live our lives in the way Christ taught us. Guided by the senior student leaders, our Youth SVP team plan and deliver Acts of Worship to teach younger students how to live out this message. They talk about the practicality of prayer and how they must actively ‘live out’ their faith. As seen in some of the photographs, our pupils raise money by organising bake sales-these always go down well-raffling chocolate hampers, football matches, collections and more. One thing that our pupils enjoy is sending positive messages of love to each other; being charitable isn’t exclusively giving money, it is about being kind through loving and respecting one another. In the photograph, you see three of our ‘mental health elves’ who regularly deliver messages of love and support to staff and students.

Our focus tables are adorned with liturgical colours and items relating to the focus of the week. Our students document their daily acts in a tutor scrapbook and this gives an opportunity to let other students’ talents shine.

We love to join as a community and as a wider parish, saying liturgies and masses together. Our students gather for whole school Acts of Worship and a particularly poignant celebration is our Remembrance Worship. At St Bede’s, we remember those that have gone before us and take solace in knowing they are now enveloped in God’s everlasting love.

Saint John Houghton, Ilkeston

Teach me, O Lord, the wisdom of your ways. Based on Psalm 25:4

Here in Saint John Houghton Catholic Voluntary Academy, we are grateful to our past Parish Priests, staff and Parishioners who have served our school family. Our aim is to lead our young people to being active, thoughtful, caring and considered citizens. We are most grateful to have one of our former students serving us as our Priest. Fr Paul Newman certainly answered the call to ‘called forth to learn and follow’ – such a great invitation from Jesus. Fr Paul is teaching us the Greatest Commandment to love.

Fr Paul and SJH staff are developing disciples here in school. Our students come from all walks of life and we celebrate the diversity of students leading collective worship.

SJH Team Chaplaincy have extended the care for each other evolving into Parish Ambassadors. Everyone has a contribution to make: pupils, parents, grandparents and catechist so our combined personalities and strengths make us stronger together.

Our wonderful students organised a Charity Football match and our Parish Ambassadors invited Fr David Cain to be the guest star player.

Parish Ambassadors led raising money for CAFOD – they achieved an amazing £3564.22 and over £400 for Ilkeston Church Roof Fund.

We are delighted to announce, ‘Friends of Saint John Houghton Coffee Morning’, knowing we are blessed we will take our past into our future to gather the people, share the story and break the bread.

Saint Joseph, Cleethorpes

At St Joseph’s we particularly enjoy fundraising for different charities. We have many groups within school that organise numerous events that we can all participate in. Here are a few of the fundraising events that we have participated in during Advent Term 2021. St Joseph’s deserve a glitter ball for their amazing charity fundraising skills.

Children In Need is a very special time of year when people all over the country do things to raise money for numerous causes to support others. At St Joseph’s, children and staff donated a £1 to dress in colourful clothes and, this year, could also take part for just a £1 to enter a Strictly Come Dancing competition.

Our Chaplaincy Team organised its own Strictly Come Dancing competition and raised £141.57 which was, I am sure you would agree just FAB-U-LOUS!

CAFOD aliens landed in St Joseph’s and turned all the children’s clothes green! The CAFOD Go Green challenge raised money to tackle poverty caused by the climate crisis. For our Go Green fundraiser, lots of children came to school wearing green and donated what money they could.

A cake stall, organised by the Chaplaincy team, sold out in a breath taking 12 minutes! On the day during our act of worship Mrs Tuff said she could see “a beautiful sea of green”. Our efforts raised an amount of £171.

Harvest Time is here again. HARVEST is the time during our Advent term where we do all we can to support people in our local area. As a school we donate numerous food items and share in an Act of Worship that was planned and led by the chaplaincy team. This year was no different and staff from Harbour Place came to collect the food that we kindly donated.

Harbour Place Grimsby is a centre for homeless people of North East Lincolnshire. The Mini-Vinnies and Chaplaincy team enjoyed meeting the volunteers of Harbour Place and learning more about their work. The two visitors from Harbour Place thanked us and our families for their generosity and said the items they had brought in would be very much appreciated.

Remembrance Day 2021. The Poppy Appeal is the Royal British Legion’s biggest fundraising campaign held every year in November, during the period of Remembrance. Poppy Day was exciting at St Joseph’s, with lots going on. Poppies were on sale in the playground and the Chaplaincy Team also took them round the classes.

The Mini-Vinnies organised a cake sale where

lots of cakes were baked, sold and eaten! Which raised £123.88

A member of the British Legion visited school to collect the money that we had raised.

CAFOD Club created a stunning display for Remembrance in November. It featured poppies that has been created by almost every child in the school. Those who sacrificed their lives for us to be free were also remembered in a special liturgy.

Saint Margaret Clitherow, Bestwood

The chaplaincy team at St Margaret Clitherow try to live out our Mission Statement ‘Love one another’ through the example we set in school and in the wider community.

As a chaplaincy team we work together in a variety of ways. We encourage everyone when making decisions, to share their ideas and to try their best.

One of our aims is to encourage the children to live out their faith in their daily lives. We not only support liturgy, prayer and the spiritual life of the school; but also support charities- both local and global through raising money and prayer; for example, CAFOD, Emmanuel House, water aid to name but a few.

We represent our school at parish masses and events through our singing, readings and bidding prayers – such as first communion celebrations, Harvest, Advent and Christmas.

As chaplains there is never a dull moment!

We have had themes to include Laudate Si, and the Year of St Joseph. Now it is time to reflect on the ‘synod of the whole church.’ The whole school received a prayer card, now we are asking ourselves questions about the future of our church.

We will do our best to continue to grow stronger links with our parish and diocese and further develop positive relationships with and beyond the school community

By example we will share our mission: ‘Love one another.’

By Emily and Carisa.

Lay Chaplains: Year 6 – Alex, Carisa, Deng, Emily, Philippa; Year 5 – Annya, Damien, Faylan, Joseph, Oliver.

Saint Mary, Glossop

Year 3 and 4 pupils of Saint Mary’s Catholic Voluntary Academy visited the newly re-opened Manchester Jewish Museum in November. The city centre museum has welcomed visitors back after a six million pound redevelopment. The museum has a new gallery, café, shop, learning studio and kitchen as well as the complete restoration of their Spanish and Portuguese synagogue. The children enjoyed two workshops learning about ‘Sabbath and Synagogue’ and ‘Feasts and Festivals’. The junior children were encouraged to make links between their faith and the customs and practices of the Jewish community. The hands-on experience included exploration of artefacts and the making of challah bread to take home! When asked about their favourite part of the trip the children commented

– “Baking the bread!” The children showed great respect and took a keen interest asking many questions. The visit to the museum is part of an annual focus week on Judaism as part of the children’s Religious Education programme of study.

Saint Mary, New Mills

We held a cake sale to raise funds for CAFOD World gifts on Friday 8th October. We raised £175.50, which is an incredible amount for a small school.

We have used these funds to purchase the following World Gifts: 4 goats-1 per class 4 teachers to read 1 weather proof crop 1 energy stove

The World Gift Purchases from each school will then be added to the St. Ralph Sherwin Trust World map.

St Norbert’s Catholic Primary is a school of approximately 120 pupils in the small town of Crowle. Our Mission Statement is lived out by our close-knit supportive community and we are a gold ‘Rights Respecting School’.

Each year we participate in promoting the work of CAFOD, together with prayers and fundraising. When schools were working remotely during the closures, we challenged our pupils to exercise each day by walking for CAFOD’s ‘Walk for Water’ campaign, to provide water into isolated schools in Ethiopia. As you can see, the pupils worked hard through sponsorship to raise £1000.

One of our well-loved traditions is the annual May Procession in honour of Our Lady. Every year we erect five altars on the school field, representing the five Glorious Mysteries. Each altar displays the statue of Mary from our five classes. As we process, we sing hymns and recite the rosary. At the final altar, each child leaves flowers as Our Lady’s statue is crowned and we sing ‘O Mary we crown thee with blossoms today, Queen of the angels and Queen of the May’.

Our pupils volunteer work for the ‘Scunthorpe Forge Project’ throughout the year. This is to support the homeless. In the picture you can see Angela Houghton, manager from the Forge, collecting toiletries and warm fleeces. These are for homeless people who drop in to the Forge for a hot shower and additional clothes for winter. The pupils pictured have promoted the campaign.

Saint Teresa, Aspley

This year, we have already celebrated many wonderful things within our school community. We were thrilled to share Mass within our Parish Church again, something that the children really missed during lockdown restrictions.

Following our recent Ofsted inspection, we were delighted to be judged Outstanding in all areas for the second time. This is a remarkable achievement and reflects the hard work and dedication of the pupils, staff, parents, governors and parish community, who work so hard to make the school such a special place. To mark this wonderful achievement, we will share a day of celebration in the new year.

Within our school, we also have a new chaplaincy team and were thrilled to see the large number of new applicants excited to join from our Year 5 classes.

In response to the Pope’s years of the Synod and our schools’ letter from Bishop Patrick, we have created a school Synod Committee, made from one student from each class to discuss and respond to the key questions: Who are the people who feel left out and excluded in the Church; What is my dream for the Church and my school; What does the Holy Spirit inspire us to do in our Church and school? The children have responded in such thoughtful and detailed ways that we look forward to continuing to find new ways to explore these questions within our school and wider Church community.

This term, we have been very proud of the support for those in need which our school community has shared in. Our focus on the theme of Encounter has provided the children with opportunities to think about how we can see the face of Jesus in those we meet. The children and their families have been incredible generous with our fundraising events, including cake sales for Mission Together, Reverse Advent Calendar donations for St Margaret’s Food Bank and Lanterns of Light for the Love Christmas Initiative.