The following letter has been emailed out to parents of children in Years R-6 today (9th March 2023) To download a copy of the letter, click here.
Dear parent(s)/carer(s),
This year we are building upon the fabulous work that children completed around Vocations during the last academic year as we embrace our whole school development priority of embedding the principals of Catholic Social Teaching into all aspects of our school life.
Catholic Social Teaching is about seeking to apply the essence of Christian moral principles into life and society – essentially putting our learning and teachings into action. Each half-term, as a school, we have focussed on a different principal of Catholic Social Teaching, discussing and unpicking together what this means for us and how we can embrace this further within our lives. So far we have looked at, Human dignity, Family, community and participation and solidarity. The children have completed various activities within their classrooms to support and further understand these ideas.
On Monday, we shared with the children our theme for this half-term, ‘Care for the Poor and Vulnerable’ and discussed what this means to us and the fact that God calls us to ensure justice in all societies by the way we treat the most poor and vulnerable. This Catholic Social Teaching calls us to listen, see and respond to the cry of the poor through our words and actions. By doing so, we are not making a gift of what is ours to the poor, but we are giving back what is rightfully theirs. We put those affected by poverty first.
We are now asking all children to complete a piece of work at home by thinking about how they can help the poor and vulnerable within our local or global community and carrying out an act to achieve this. There are many different approaches that they could take, which we discussed during the assembly such as:
- Raising money for a good cause
- Raising awareness of charity work and global issues amongst others
- Giving time to talk to an engage with elderly friends and relatives
- Encouraging friends and family to support a local foodbank
- Praying for the poor and vulnerable
These are just some ideas and we are certain that with your support, the children can come up with even more. Children can work individually or may choose to co-ordinate with friends or siblings. We would then like the children to share with us what they have done. Again – this can be done so in many different ways, whether it be a photograph of them carrying out their act, a written explanation or drawing of what they did or something completed digitally – it is completely up to them. It shouldn’t take them a considerable amount of time as we would like them to primarily focus their efforts on the act itself.
We would like completed pieces of work to be returned to school by Wednesday 19th April. We recognise that these pieces of work are very personal and, whilst we look forward to seeing or hearing about what the children have done, we will not be showcasing and presenting these works to the whole school as we did with the vocations projects last year.
Thank you for your continued support.
Mrs R McGrath
RE lead / Deputy Headteacher
