As a Church of England Voluntary Controlled School, we have very close connections with St. Mary’s Church in Shincliffe. We have links with other churches in the Durham area too.
Christian Values for Schools
Our Christian Values are at the centre of everything we do at Shincliffe CE Primary School. They help us to live out our Christian Vision of ‘life in all its fullness’. Each half term, we focus on a different Christian Value. This is done explicitly through our Collective Worship time, but also throughout our curriculum. Children have regular opportunities to reflect on each value and to develop an understanding of the Value in action. Each Friday, in our Celebration Worship, we acknowledge children who have demonstrated these values.
Our visitors from St. Mary’s Church (Father Peter, Father Bill and Mrs Matthews) regularly lead our worship to help us to reinforce our understanding of each value as they share stories from the Bible. Children have opportunities to plan, prepare and lead worship for the whole school through class assemblies.
The Values we explore and strive to live by are:
We believe these values are empowering our pupils to develop their spirituality and guiding them in personal development as effective learners and good citizens. For more information please view the Christian Values for Schools website or our Christian Values Powerpoint for Parents.
During the Autumn term we will be revisiting and further exploring the value of Creatvity and Wisdom.
Creativity
This half term we are focussing on CREATIVITY as our whole school Christian Value.
Seen from a Christian perspective all of life is a ‘gift’, entrusted by God to humankind for a purpose. This purpose is glimpsed as the creative spirit within each person learns to value and explore, celebrate and enjoy this world in all its mystery and diversity. With this gift comes a mutual responsibility to ensure the creation is not spoiled, but rather sustained and shared by all.
St Paul’s letter to the Romans tells us:
We are to use our different gifts in accordance with the grace that God has given us. If our gift is to serve, we should serve; if it is to teach, we should teach; if it is to encourage others, we should do so.
Jesus told his followers that
I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10
We would like our children to continue their reflection and experience at home.
Wisdom
This term we will be focussing in School on the value of WISDOM.
Wisdom is Good sense and judgement based on life experiences.
Just like most faiths, the Christian tradition lays emphasis on the need to ‘get wisdom’ as a mark of spiritual maturity. The Bible talks of wisdom as a gift from God and in the New Testament wisdom is one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. True wisdom is intimately bound up with ‘honouring God’. Only God is truly wise and Christians see this expressed supremely in Jesus Christ, who is described as the wisdom of God So, for Christians, ‘growing in wisdom’ is about growing more Christ-like, and indeed he in turn is described as growing in wisdom when he was a child.
Wisdom isn’t about what you know (this is knowledge/information) but about what you do with what you know – the application of your knowledge. Being wise doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with age or intellect. Although it is a gift, it is a virtue that needs to be nurtured. The Bible has specific books of wisdom in which, through poetry, story and proverbs, advice is given on how wisdom might be developed. The book of Proverbs is a selection of over 300 sayings of Solomon (who wrote over 3000 in total – see 1 Kings 4:32) and helps the reader to discover what wisdom is, often contrasting it with foolishness; the book also probes into some of the characteristics of wisdom, highlighting a judicious use of silence, a reluctance to say too much and a caring attitude toward those less fortunate. Proverbs also points its readers to examples in nature from which we can learn wisdom, for example, 6:6 ‘learn by watching an anthill’; compare this with Aesop’s fables or the stories about Anansi the spider from West Africa
SIAMS
In March 2018 we underwent a Statutory Inspection of the School as an Anglican School (SIAMS). We are delighted with the judgement of Outstanding that we received. For further information regarding the SIAMS reports please view our school performance page.
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