Collective Worship
At Thorverton C of E Primary School we hold a daily act of Collective Worship. We use our Collective Worship time as an opportunity to learn more about our School Christian Values and explore our own thoughts, and beliefs. We use a resource called Roots and Fruits to help us with this.
On Mondays, Mr Holding, our Head of School, leads Collective Worship.
On Tuesdays we have Class Collective Worship, often based around the resource 'Picture News. Click here to find out more information.
On Wednesdays, we have a Class Singing Collective Worship, where we learn songs and sing together. These songs are often chosen by our JETs team and are usually linked to our School Christian Values.
On Thursdays, we have Visitor/JETs Collective Worship, where Reverend Tim Collins, or our JETs team lead us.
Fridays are for our Celebration Assembly. We all gather together and teachers award certificates to children for their learning and for demonstrating our School Christian Values. We also celebrate achievements outside of school too!
Church and Community Links
At Thorverton school, we are really proud of our links with the community and our local church. Here are some of the Church and Community projects and events that we have taken part recently.
Creation Sings Church Schools Project
The Year 5 and 6 children at Brampford Speke, Silverton and Thorverton C of E Schools came together last week to take part in ‘Creation Sings’. This project brings together science, faith and music and enables children to start to think about the way that the ‘how’ of creation in science can be reconciled to the ‘why’ of creation in the bible. It was organised by a team from God and the Big Bang, which seeks to give children and young people the opportunity to explore how faith and science can work together to explain the biggest questions that human beings can ask.
During their two day visit the team worked with Year 5 and 6 children from the three Church Schools in the federation. Each session began with an introductory talk, getting the children ready to broaden their horizons and deepen their thinking. Then they moved around interactive workshops for the rest of the session, looking at topics like climate change, miracles and evolution. The workshops were interactive and engaging, giving children the tools they needed to develop their own opinions and then discuss and debate some big questions with their peers. Afterwards, they had the opportunity to challenge the workshop leaders with their burning questions in the area of science and faith. In the second session, children learned songs which have been written for Creation Sings on different themes in science and faith. These were a chance for the children to further their understanding and respond in awe and wonder to all that they have learnt about in the first part of the day.
At the end of the second day, all the children gathered together at St Thomas’ Church in Thorverton to share the songs that they had learned in their workshops. The celebration was led by John Jolliffe, the Executive Headteacher, and included a reflection on the creation story, led by Rev Tim Collins, the Priest-in-Charge of the Netherexe Mission Community, which includes Brampford Speke and Thorverton.
Christmas Celebrations
Christmas Service
We had a fantastic Christmas Service at the church on Wednesday 14th December, where Class 1 treated us to a retelling of the nativity story and the other classes sang some beautiful hymns. It was a great opportunity to slow down, reflect and celebrate this wonderful time of year! A huge well done to all of the classes for their fabulous singing and to Class 1 for their acting and performing skills!
Christingle Service and Christmas Extravaganza
We held our school Christmas Christingle Service at the church. The children all made Christingles in the their classes at school at brought this along to the service. Reverend Tim spoke about the importance of the Christingle to Christians and what each element represented. We then lit the Christingles and had a period of quiet reflection. It was a lovely service and it was great to see so many parents, carers and family members join us.
The weekend following the Christingle saw the church host a Christmas Craft Extravaganza, where the children were invited to take part in a range of craft and art activities at the church, learn more about the Christmas story and have time to reflect on the true meaning of Christmas. A huge thank you to the church for organising this event - it was a brilliant way to end the autumn term.
Village Window Advent Calendar
We were really excited that this year the church organised a Thorverton Village Window Advent Calendar and we were asked to take part! A huge thankyou to our school JETs team – Emily C, Sufia, Evie, Daisy and Wren W for their hard work in designing and creating our wonderful window!
Participants were challenged to try and find the newly decorated window each day throughout advent and to stamp their Window Passports, which were available from the school office for a price of £1. The money raised went to the church to support them with the work they do in the local community.
Thorverton Remembrance Service
We held a special service at the War Memorial outside the church on Friday 11th December. Members of each class lay a wreath at the memorial and members of Class 4 read out the names of all the soldiers from the parish of Thorverton who bravely fought and tragically died in both the Great War and World War Two. We had two-minutes silence, punctuated with the playing of the Last Post and the reading of a poem by members of Class 4. A huge thank you to Alex Fice for making the school such an integral part of this service - we are really grateful for the opportunity to gather as a community and remember the tragedies of the past and to consider those around the world who are still affected by war today.
Harvest Celebrations
To celebrate this year's Harvest, we held a service at the church. Each class shared some of the learning they had done this year around harvest and we spent lots of time thinking about all of the different reasons we have to be thankful! It was really great to see the church so full with friends and family - thank you to everyone who came along. As well as our Harvest Celebration Service, we also held a collection for CHAT, who run a local food bank, and Lucy's Larder, a Thorverton community food-sharing project based at the church. Thank you to everyone for their donations.