Courageous Advocacy - Agents of Change

A courageous advocate is someone who supports, champions and speaks up for a cause that is important and meaningful to them. Courage is needed to persevere and stand up for something or someone you believe in, to make a difference.

At The Priory, we want to support and encourage our children to become courageous advocates, not just locally but nationally and globally. Our children recognise that they can raise money to support charities and locally but understand the importance of being able to make change through actions and beliefs that are not financially dependent.

At some point in life we will all face challenges and need support to help us overcome these barriers. We teach our children that is important to help others regardless of where they come from or what their challenges are. We teach this in many ways; through our work on values, by links to the Bible, other faiths and world views as well as learning about other courageous advocates. We want our children to have confidence to discuss and debate big ideas, to challenge injustice and engage in activities that can bring about change on some level.

"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy."

(Proverbs 31: 8-9)

It is important for our children to appreciate their role as part of a community; to take responsibility, to be able to look after themselves and foster an understanding of their importance, impact and influence in the world.

In recent years we have carried out fundraising to raise awareness of issues and support those working for change, including:

Local foodbanks
Sports relief
Comic Relief
Children in Need
Rungando school in Uganda
Pakistan Flood Relief
Ukrainian refugees
Support for charities of significance to our children and families

We aim for our children to develop an excellent grasp on the meaning of belonging to a local and global community and the sense of responsibility that comes with this belonging. We need to show our connection with, and care for, the world in which we all live and care for the people who live in it. We achieve this through showcasing and involving our pupils in a range of extra-curricular activities:

Links with local care home which we regularly visit
Faith Council and Eco Council who seek views of the children, giving a voice to concerns and plans
School newsletters supports local events and community information sharing
Richard Thornton Community Fortnight - Link here

Making our school, community and world better for everyone.

At The Priory, we feel that it is imperative that our children have a voice, are listened to and are able to make tangible changes in school and locally. Therefore, classes have a project to run over the year. Each class holds a discussion around what the role entails and why it is important for our school. Then, the children will be involved in making improvements to the school and developing new or on-going projects. Each class will run a collective worship on their project to ignite enthusiasm and learning about the actions that are being taken!

Classes and their Young Leader project

Early Years - Outdoor Learners
Year 1 - Eco Warriors
Year 2 - Active Ambassadors
Year 3 - Friendship Pals
Year 4 Cedar - Outdoor Learners
Year 5 - Healthy Ambassadors
Year 6 - Attendance Monitors

Chestnut Class - Active Ambassadors class assembly, daily mile and running project!

Chestnut class led an assembly for the school to encourage the daily mile and remind us of why being active is so important. They ran a quiz and interviewed Mrs Steward on being active. They have also advertised a running club for KS2 and parents on Wednesdays at 7:45am - please let the office know if you would like to join!

Click this link to see the video they made!

Chestnut Active Ambassadors video

Outdoor Learners

Our Outdoor Learning team recruited a team of pupils and parents to begin the first phase of our sensory garden development. On a cold and bleak Saturday November morning, some hardy souls weeded, clipped and chopped back the overgrown patch. The next phases will be fencing off the area, planting and signage.

A big thank you to:

Dominic Slade

Laura & Richard Cox (plus Barnaby & Torin)

Ian Buddhu (and Daniel)

Olivier Geleoc

Simon Warrender (plus Freddie)

Before:

During:

Our next initiatives will be to encourage every class to use this area as a calm space to relax and become in touch with their spirituality; support classes to have at least one lesson a week with an outdoor focus and provide further resources for break times.

Eco Warriors

At The Priory, we are passionate about addressing environmental issues throughout our school. We believe that being an eco-school encourages teamwork and helps to create a shared understanding of what it takes to run a school in a way that respects and enhances the environment we live in.

Our ‘Eco Team’ is made up of one child from each KS2 class. We feel it is important that the children understand what the role of being part of the ‘Eco Team’ entails and encourage them to volunteer within their class. Within the first meeting as a team, a school ‘Eco Code’ will be drawn up to be shared with the rest of the school and staff. This code reflects The Priory’s commitment to being sustainable.

They worked hard to present a collective worship to the rest of the school to inform us all about how many trees are cut down, animals killed by plastic and how often paper can be recycled. They have launched an initiative where each class has allocated monitors to ensure that lights and interactive whiteboards are turned off when not needed, that books are cared for and looked after in the classrooms and that rubbish is separated for recycling correctly. Ask who are your monitors for your class!

Our main targets include:

Reducing air pollution;
Refurbishment of the ‘Quiet Garden’;
Fundraising for charities.

The Eco Team meets regularly throughout the term.

The members of our team undertake many responsibilities, including:

Working collaboratively on school projects;
Liaising with School Council on shared targets;
Carrying out assemblies in order to communicate progress, ideas and actions;
Looking after different areas around the school;
Producing posters and displays;
Encouraging litter picking within the playground;
Promote recycling around the school.

Healthy Heroes

Our Healthy Heroes who encourage our school community to eat healthily so that are bodies are happy and we are ready to learn. They have encouraged each child to make a poster recommending healthy snacks and lunches and will begin to monitor how healthy everyone's snacks are at break and lunch with stickers available for those making great choices!

Please watch Beech class' collective worship below!

/i/video/Beech_assembly.mp4