Collective worship

Inspired by our school vision, our whole All Saints family meet each morning to participate in a daily act of worshiping God and developing faith, hope and resilience together. For us collective worship is the heartbeat of the school. We worship in the mornings so that what is learnt in these sessions can be taken outside of the school hall and applied practically by all later that day into 21^st century life. We design our collective worship sessions to develop our school family, spiritually, morally, socially and culturally. To do this our worship takes on a variety of forms: Mondays starts with a wows and ows stimulus, Tuesdays is worship through song, Wednesdays in-class worship begins with a culture vulture task, Thursdays is windows, mirrors and doors based and Fridays is Celebration/Vision in Action days.

Our worship is invitational; nobody is told they must participate and those of different faiths are free to pray in their own way when prayer takes place. Our daily acts of worship also contain a ‘same but different’ slot where similar messages from different faiths are identified.

Daily class prayers

In addition to our morning collective worship session, all classes participate in a prayer reading before lunchtime to thank God for the food they are about to eat and a prayer reading at hometime to thank God for keeping them safe and being by their side throughout the day.

During class prayer times, children of different faiths often demonstrate how they offer thanks in their own religion and children like to devise their own personalised prayers which are read out during this time.

Community services

Five times a year the whole school, including parents, join the children to worship as a community. Usually we would walk together to the church to do this, however, as the church is being renovated at present, the parents join us in a set of staggered services instead. We have a dedication service to welcome in the new school year and give thanks for being together, a Harvest service to give thanks to God for our food, a Christmas service to celebrate the birth of Jesus, an Easter service to celebrate the resurrection of Christ and an end of year service to pray for successful transitions to new classes new schools and new futures.