Hope and Aspiration
At St. Anne’s we have high aspirations for our pupils, reflecting our mission to give the children within our care hope to succeed in life and fulfil their potential. To live this fullest of lives, they need to develop resilient, loving characters alongside exceptional academic skills with ‘Minds to Learn, Hearts to Care’. The vision guides actions of pupils to be the best they can be, but also directs them to help others to ‘love their neighbour as themselves’. Displayed values remind pupils of the practical application of this in everyday life.
The vision has impact through a variety of sources:
Curriculum Opportunities
Pupils have opportunities to look beyond themselves, ask ‘big questions’, think globally about life and develop an understanding of disadvantage, deprivation and the exploitation of the natural world via the RE, Science, Geography and PHSCE curricula, with class novels chosen to support this. The British Values aspect of SMSC also encourages children to actively engage in cultural and global issues Beyond the curriculum, St. Anne’s as an Eco Schools Gold Green Flag Award winner, has taken part in numerous initiatives over the past ten years around issues of global significance and world ecology.
The school’s work on character development has enhanced the language of positive learning to increase pupils’ resilience. ‘Learn to Learn’ Skills are nurtured within six identified areas-independent enquirers, team workers, reflective thinkers, effective participators, self-managers, resourceful thinkers- and are seen as central to the ability to assimilate, voice and reflect. Inspirational and aspirational role models from different walks of life serve to complement this focus on leadership and teamwork.
Leadership and Teamwork
Leadership and the power of teamwork is a quality we seek to instil within our young people. Our oldest pupils exemplify this through the Buddy, Playground Pals and Monitor systems. All members of the school community are encouraged to have a voice and have it heard; this is enabled through our Pupil Voice Programme. Children in each class are encouraged to become active citizens through the opportunity to join one of our eight pupil voice groups: Charities Team; Global Neighbours; Safety Superheroes; Eco and Enterprise Warriors; Chaplaincy Team; Right2B Group; Fair and Squarers; Anti-Bullying Team; Junior Leadership Team
Courageous Advocacy
Each of the pupil voice groups spearheads courageous advocacy at school level, guided by their motto ‘Faith in Action’ Ref: James ‘faith without action is dead’. They are given freedom to express ideas to drive forward what they believe is important to them and discuss how to turn their choices into reality. The groups draw up an annual Action and Charities Plan, which is firmed up to link clearly to learning opportunities. The children justify reasons for their choices and discuss the need for the work of particular projects or charities, allowing the groups to lead on a number of different important issues in a structured way, but also providing scope to deviate, in response to live events and suggestions raised across school by children acting on personal initiative.
Evidence of pupils adding depth to their strong recognition of the needs of others in the world has resulted in many child-led projects, aimed at supporting communities at school, local, national and global levels. One powerful example regarding the Dog Meat Trade not only sparked a response from the local MP, but was also carried to government level. View further information in the Pupils section.
School Community
In response to requests from staff, families or children affected across the school, the school has raised awareness and funds for charities such as Macmillan, diabetes, epilepsy, CF, North East Air Ambulance.
Local Community
Being a lead school for the Growing Faith initiative links church, home and school communities. For the past five years, St. Anne’s has gained Archbishop of York Young Leaders accreditation at both Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 to ‘be the change you want to see’ and ‘Community Matters’. The school also supports the local ‘Angel Trust’, run by the family of a past pupil and the Women’s Refuge alongside raising awareness of community issues via projects in conjunction with St. Anne’s, St. Andrew’s, Woodhouse and Methodist churches.
National Community
The school annually supports the following charities: Poppy Appeal, Children in Need, Red Nose Day, Race for Life, Sport Relief, Comic Relief, Macmillan, NSPCC.
Global Community
The Right2B Pupil Voice Team develops pupil understanding of disadvantage and deprivation. The school currently holds the Rights Respecting award at Bronze level and is well placed to submit the application for Silver. St. Anne’s has also held the Fairtrade Achievers Award for the past six years, due to the work of the Fair and Squarers Pupil Voice Team in raising awareness of and fundraising for Fairtrade and Water Aid. The latter has led to the school sponsoring multiple facilities, as part of Toilet Twinning. The Global Neighbours Accreditation Programme (Bronze Award achieved) has also given us the structure to explore BIG questions on a global scale, with the most recent venture supporting communities overseas in their struggle to mitigate the effects of the pandemic.
As usual, the children (with your help) all got on board with the beginnings of feeling festive with a fantastic array of Christmas Jumpers. It was lovely to see lots of happy faces, some antlers, some little elves and even the odd Grinch on Friday, in support of the fantastic work that Save the Children do. Thank you for your generosity of spirit.
A special thank you to Ella and her family for kindly donating their reverse advent collections to the Woodhouse Close Food Bank. It is wonderful to see our youngest children being so loving and caring of others.
Diabetes Day
On Friday 26th November, we went blue to raise awareness of Diabetes. Diabetes affects people in our community. The children all saw a PowerPoint in class which explained with Type 1 diabetes is and what the challenges are for those who live with it. They also learned the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 (1 being insulin dependent and 2 being insulin resistant). The children all had a great day and we raised some money in the process for JDRF, which is gratefully received.
COP26 – Eco Warriors Team
Earlier this month, the Eco Warriors Team enjoyed a visit from Rio from Oases (Outdoor Education Specialists) to talk about Climate Change. With COP26 recently over, climate change is big on our minds and our Eco Team want to come up with ways to make our school community more environmentally friendly. But first, throwing an inflatable world to each other, we discussed ideas of what we understand climate change to be. We then, with the help of cards, worked out the cycle of events that have led to climate change happening. The children managed to get it into the correct order pretty quickly and with great debate.
With Rio’s help, we also came up with lots of ways we can make a small impact here in our school. So watch this space, you will hear about these in due course! We then made a model of our school and included lots of things we like about it, like our bike shed as it encourages people to ride to school rather than take the car, and things we would like to have in an ideal world, such as solar panels. The children were wonderful and worked so well as a team. Rio was really impressed with all of their knowledge and how well they all worked together. Well done Eco Warriors!
We ended the week honouring Children in Need by inviting our children to wear something yellow. We even had a special visitor who joined us at the school gate and also visited the classrooms throughout the day. The children reflected on why we support this special charity and why some children have extra needs. They also took part in Yoga and did some Pudsey crafts. Thank you for all of your support, we raised a fantastic £89.00!
Odd Socks Day
This week has been a busy week. We kicked Anti-Bullying Week off with Odd Socks Day. We all wore our odd socks to remember and celebrate that it is ok to be different. If we were all the same, life would be very boring. We also looked at ways we could be kind to each other and bring a smile to the faces of our friends. We are happy to have so many kind children here at St Anne’s who will look out for each other.
Toy Appeal
Thank you for all of your gifts so far that we are collecting in our toy appeal for Woodhouse Close Church and The Angel Trust. Any gifts can be brought into school with your child and will be added to the collection to be donated later this month. Deadline for donations is the 10th December.
