First Federation Trust
Our Ethos Teams
At Sidmouth Primary School we have 2 ethos teams; an adult ethos team and a child ethos team. These teams sometimes cross over and work together. The ethos teams role is to preserve and develop the Christian character of the school through its vision and values.
Meet the Ethos Team
Sidmouth Primary School has an ethos committee consisting of children from each year group and class in Key Stage 2. They meet regularly and are responsible for supporting and promoting our school ethos, vision and values. They help lead assemblies, manage the prayer space, lead and support our whole school ethos afternoons and help with any special services that we have. They carry out monitoring of children's opinions regarding assemblies.
Ethos Day - Hope
Across the school we spend the afternoon using the book 'The Lighthouse Story' to look at the theme of hope. The children used this story as a stimulus to discuss the notion that the Christian value of Hope is more than wishful thinking but about placing trust in God. The children explored the idea that Christians believe that anything is possible when their trust is placed in God’s hands.
We used the work of Hannah Dunnett to create a basis for the children expressing what hope means to them and to Christians.
The artwork the children have produced is incredible and has made a super display in the Year 1/2 corridor.
Ethos Day - Kindness and Hope
Each class read ‘The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse’ to look at the values of kindness and hope. They took part in a number of activities such as creating an ‘act of kindness’ rainbow, some kindness posters and some art work to accompany their favourite phrases from the book. Some children created their own kindness sayings.
Ethos Day - Flourish
The whole class looked at the Flourish part of our vision statement. We used the book ‘You are Special’ to look first at the fact that we are all unique and special. We are different and aren’t all good at the same things but we are all special. The children created some artwork to express themselves as individuals through their interests and abilities. Then, in order to take their abilities and use them to serve the community, each class thought of a mini project they could take part in to support our school, local, national or global community.
Ethos Day - Aspire
Schools from across the trust met to spend the day thinking about the word ‘Aspire’. We started with discussions about what we aspire to do and be now and in the future. We then thought about quotes and sayings that we could use to promote aspiring to achieve our best and created posters containing these quotes. Looking wider, we discussed the story of ‘The Water Princess’ and looked at how we could change lives through the process of Toilet Twinning. Lots of fundraising ideas were discussed and schools went home with an action plan of how they are going to raise the money.
Hub Ethos Day – Thankfulness
Schools from across our hub joined us for a day to think about harvest and thankfulness. We started the day by writing prayers of thankfulness on leaves to create a tree and used seeds to create the word Harvest. We then looked at situations that children around the world were in at the moment and spent some time thinking about what we could do to help. Each school thought about fundraising events and how to make people more aware of the situations some people are in. We then took that back to our schools to follow up.
Federation Ethos Day at Buckfast Abbey
Some of the members of the ethos team had the privilege of visiting Buckfast Abbey with ethos teams from across the Federation. Whilst there they took part in different workshops, including stained glass windows, natural reflections and a workshop in the garden.
