Our Church School
OUR CHURCH SCHOOL
We are proud to be a Church of England School. We hope you enjoy looking through our Church School pages to learn about how we live our Christian ethos, vision and values every day here at St Mark's.
For information on how we teach RE at St Mark's, please follow this link.
COLLECTIVE WORSHIP
All acts of worship at St Mark's are Christian in character, although we draw comparisons with other religions and cultural traditions. All our assemblies seek to develop children’s understanding of the Church and the role it can play in their lives; to develop their understanding of a Christian moral code and how it applies to them and all in our community.
Above all, Collective Worship at St Mark’s is sensitive to the needs and backgrounds of the community we serve.
All Worship follows the worship structure, which you can see below.
PICTURE NEWS
Each week we choose a current news story, provide an image, a thought-provoking question and a variety of teaching resources. The resources are designed to expose children to current affairs, discover their interests and bring the world closer to their everyday lives. Our resources provide opportunities for children to learn from our world and develop respect for other’s beliefs, feelings and faiths. They encourage exploration, discussion, challenge and inspire children to learn!
Picture News is used at St. Mark's to inspire and engage in real-life learning that children can impact and influence! It gives children opportunities to develop learning further through news stories that inspire them. It allows them to discover talents and interests through the broad coverage. How can you know you are interested in something if you don’t even know it exists?
If children want to make a difference, this gives them the confidence to speak out. They must develop resilience. If at first, they do not succeed, develop ideas further, do not give up! Work together and share ideas to learn even more.
Picture News exposes children to a range of current issues including political, religious, cultural, environmental, social, moral, and spiritual. It makes British Values relevant and meaningful and develop links between personal, school and community values. Children are able to demonstrate respect and tolerance explaining how they should behave or what they should say.
The information below shows the half termly coverage and the weekly question our children explore through the Reflection Challenges.
primary picture news coverage document collective worship england spring 1 2025.pdf
primary picture news coverage document england collective worship autumn 2.pdf
primary picture news england coverage document summer 2 2024.pdf
PRAYER
We wrote a school prayer that is shared in every worship. The children also write their own prayers and place them in the prayer box on the altar, to be shared in Worship.
CLASS LED WORSHIP: KS2 classes lead a service and FS/KS1 classes present the Christmas Nativity. These are based on the work the class have been doing or on the termly assembly theme and all children should be involved in some way.
HARVEST-YEAR 4
CHRISTMAS- YEAR 3
EASTER- YEAR 5
LEAVERS - YEAR 6
We welcome the children with our call and respond:
Worship Lead: "Jesus is the Light of the World."
Children: "Let Your Light Shine"
In our Whole School Worship every Monday, we introduce the Picture News theme for the week, and introduce the Reflection Space Challenge.
You can see the videos and examples of the Reflection Spaces below.
On Tuesdays the classes hold their Collective Worship in class, to complete the weekly Reflection Space Activity, as a meaningful response to Monday's worship. On Wednesday, Miss McKenzie shares worship with the whole school, linked to our weekly themes, and any special religious celebrations or international events that may be taking place. Our Music Lead, Miss Livingston leads Singing Worship. on Thursdays .
On Fridays, we celebrate the children's achievements throughout the week, as we see how they have let their lights shine! We also invite parents and carers of the "Shining Stars of the Week" to join us. The Stars of the Week are chosen by teachers, and the award is given to those children who have consistently demonstrated our HERO values. You can see examples of the certificates in the Latest News Section.
You can see our Worship Calendar here
Our Collective Worship Policy may be read here.
Picture News Collective Worship
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Collective Worship Sequences
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OUR HERO VALUES
We share our HERO Values Bible stories in Collective Worship, and these are embedded through Reflection Space Activities and our HERO Values Story Sacks. Each class has their own set of story sacks, that the children can revisit in their Reflection Spaces.
CHURCH LINKS
We are very proud of our links with St George's Church in Kemp Town, and the children enjoy our celebrations in the church and Father Andrew's visits to the school!
http://www.stgeorgesbrighton.org
We have our own St Mark's school board up in the church, so the congregation can have an insight into their parish school.
Our children have written prayers to share with the Zoom Services every Sunday at St George's Church.
WHOLE SCHOOL PRAYER
We all share our school prayer together in Worship. It was written by the children during lockdown. We are proud to say that it incorproates our shared vision, and helps to remind us that we are all in it together!
