Developing Spirituality

Our definition of Spirituality:

Explore beliefs and experience; respect faiths, feelings and values; enjoy learning about oneself, others and the surrounding world; use imagination and creativity; reflect

At our school, a key section of our Vision is our commitment to developing “love” in its many forms. The development of spirituality is a vital way for us to foster a love of God and a love of one another. We are all encouraged to develop our spirituality through regular meaningful worship, reflection on the joys helping others brings us, a curriculum that encourages questioning with knowledge and a commitment to connecting with the Christian community near and far. Leaders allow for this to happen through deliberate planning, environmental considerations and developing a Family culture across the school.

Our Ethos Committee

Over the past 2 years the school has held half termly ethos meetings with teaching staff and school leaders in order to develop ways to to promote spirituality in our school.    These meetings have expanded to include parents, governors and pupil voice which is represented by our 'Church leaders' facilitator.  This group enables us to live our vision that "many hands build a house, so many hearts make a school".  The discussions at this committee help us to shape and spread our Christian ethos.  Below is a selection of minutes from these meetings.

Pro-Social Behaviour and Rewards

As you may be aware, each year group within the school takes part in a pro-social reward system. The class or year group help to decide on two pro-social reward recipients or activities and every time a child is seen to be doing something pro-social during the school day they are rewarded with a bead. The child chooses which pro-social reward jar will receive their bead and when a jar is full, that particular reward is earned.

Pro-sociality has been defined as a positive, voluntary, and altruistic behaviour - the delivery of help or a benefit to one or more people which has a major positive impact on personal and social quality of life. Pro-social activities might be demonstrated by pupils sharing toys and resources, helping their friends, assisting a member of staff, tidying up the classroom or teaching/supporting other children with their learning.

Helping one’s neighbour is a theme that is common across religions. As a value, it establishes norms and procedures for aiding others, being part of a religion entails a feeling of unity and responsibility for others, as well as a tendency to search for the common good. According to Jesus' teachings, one’s neighbour is a peer who is often weaker or needy. We should treat our neighbours as if they were oneself; therefore prosocial treatment is sought through unconditional love toward others: “Cry beside those who cry and rejoice when our brothers enjoy victory”

"Do All the Good You Can,
By All the Means You Can,
In All the Ways You Can,
In All the Places You Can,
At All the Times You Can,
To All the People You Can,
As long as Ever …
… You Can!"

John Wesley’s Rule for Christian Living

Pro-social behaviour fits perfectly with our school vision to encourage our pupils to show a love of one another and mankind itself. Our vision inspires the whole school community to engage in social action and to be courageous advocates for change in our local, national and global communities. We recognise that life is full of ups and downs and that at times all people will face challenges that they need help and support in overcoming. We aim to instil the values of service and compassion for others among our pupils. Our Christian values ensure that opportunities to discuss the big issues, to challenge injustice and to engage in activities that can bring about change are always present.

National Younger Leadership Group

Here at The Vine School, we were fortunate to be selected to receive an invitation to take part in the Church of England’s National Younger Leadership Group, hosted by the Archbishop of York Youth Trust. The group consists of 100 primary aged children to take part in 3 conference events across the year.

The purpose of the Leadership group:

“We long to see our church grow younger, growing in faith of the children and young people through schools, churches and families.  As we shape the vision of the Church of England for the next decade together, we want children and young people to be central to this journey, for your voices to be listened to and for the church’s thinking and direction to be shaped and led by the children and young people.”

Two Year 5 pupils were chosen to take part and represent The Vine School.  During the first conference event, we joined pupils from across the country to explore the key question ‘What kind of church would you like to see?’

We listened to key speakers and had opportunities to speak to other children to discuss and create our own Visions and Values that we would like to see in churches.

We were asked to think about problems that are going on in the world and what action we could take to go towards helping to make change.  Some of the ideas were, climate change, pollution and homelessness. The actions for change were; raising awareness and food/money donations.  We also thought about what we wanted our church to be like which included; loving, kind, welcoming and fun.

When all their ideas were brought together, the children were able to create their church’s vision and values.

To conclude, we know that a church is not a building but a group of people who choose to be like Jesus and make change to the world.

The input from the younger leader’s group will feed into a national process on Vision and Strategy that is being led by the new Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell.

Hope Challenge - Easter 2021

During the Easter holiday there was a Lent challenge. The pupils were asked to either develop a poster or write a poem based on the theme of "Hope for the Future". They should incorporate the theme of hope and also the school's Christian vision (our school prayer).

For the winning entries please see the school blog -