Ethos Group

We have an Ethos Group in school. This is a group of children who help Mrs Fabby  with Collective Worship and anything linked to our Church School’s status.

They meet once a week.

Some of the things they do might include:

-planning acts of worship

-leading acts of worship

-evaluating acts of worship

-writing prayers for the school and individual classes

-planning and making displays that link to our school vision and termly values

-finding out what other children think of Collective Worship in school

-choosing termly values.

 

LEADING A SERVICE 2023

18 members of the Ethos group led a service in the local church on Sunday 19th November. They were asked to do this after a member of the church saw the Pentecost service that they led for the school back in the summer. 

They talked the members of the congregation through 'The Big Story of the Bible', sharing our school's version of the 'Big Frieze' and what each section means.

I would like to say a huge thank you to these 18 children and their families for giving their time so readily at a weekend to support our school and the loca church.

CREATION: they shared what in Creation makes them go WOW.

THE FALL: 5 members of the group acted out a scene where a chocolate cake is left in a classroom with a sign saying DO NOT TOUCH in front of it. 4 of the children were children from that class and we saw the different possible reactions to this scenario. The 5th child was the teacher who catches 3 of the children dipping their fingers in the icing. A big thank you to the Howards for providing us with the cake that we were then able to share with everyone afterwards.

PEOPLE OF GOD: in school, we have talked about this section of the Bible being like a circle with God's people making the same mistakes over and over again. The children talked us through this circle, holding up images in quarters of a circle to represent the cylce the Israelites got into:

1. everything is ok
2. they make mistakes and stop listening to God
3. they are punished for their wrongdoings
4. they ask for forgiveness and are forgiven

This cycle kept repeating, over and over again, for hundreds of years. 

During this time was the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednigo, and we shared a news video that members of our Ethos group recorded during the Ethos conference last year about this story. 

INCARNATION: for this section of the service, we showed the concgregation some images of the Nativity scene from other cultures, which you can see here. 

 

They then shared what they thought would have happened if Jesus had been born today: the conclusion was he would have been born in the Countess of Chester hospital and visited by Doctors, Nurses and Midwives who would have been the Wise Men.

GOSPELGOOD NEWS: the group that focused on this area during the Ethos conference chose to look at the story of Jesus calming the storm. They watched the story and then wrote a Tweet about it. This tweet was shared with the congregation and then a little sketch was acted out with Skylar reading out the Tweet and wanting to tell her friends about it. Because her friends didn't know who Jesus was, she then told them all about him and what he had been doing. The sketch ended with the friends wanting to find Jesus.

SALVATION: the children explained that this is the final part of God's rescue plan for humankind. It tells the story of Jesus dying on the cross and being resurrected. In school, we had been learning a song called 'The Bridge' by Casting Crowns and the children sang this after explaining how it links to Salvation and 'The Big Frieze'.

KINGDOM OF GOD: during the Ethos conference, we focused on being kind for this section and so we wanted to do this for the service as well. The children decorated envelopes and placed a kind message in each. These were then placed on seats in the church with the message DO NOT OPEN YET on the front. When we got to this part of the service, the children explained what we had done and instructed everyone to open their envelopes now and read their messages. 

Anna ended our service with the following prayer, which she wrote completely by her self.

Dear God,

Thank you for this world and thank you for everyone and everything on it. Thank you for everything. I'm amazed you could visualise the world: You're amazing! Please let us not get carried away with fighting and to keep peace. Thank you for letting us be here today. Thank you for loving us and thank you for listenig. Please help others who are not as fortunate as us. In your name we pray these things.

Amen 

ETHOS CONFERENCE 2023

Our Ethos group took part in the Virutal Ethos conference this year.

They spent the day completing activities about the big story of the Bible and had an online Collective Worship with children from other schools in Cheshire.

CREATION: The children made these beautiful creation globe hangings after spending time recapping the Creation story.

 

THE FALL: We talked about what temptations we face in life and wrote these on slips of paper.

PEOPLE OF GOD: We focused on the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednigo and the children from this group created a newsreport about the story. 

INCARNATION: We looked at different artists representations of the story of Jesus' birth and what influenced these artists' designs, for example, location, culture, time they were creating in. We then discussed where we would expect Jesus to have been born if it had happened today and who we would consider to be wise people who could visit him. The children decided Jesus would have been born in hospital and the wise men would be the doctors and nurses. They then created their own artwork to represent this.

GOSPEL: The children remembered that this means Good News. We focused on the story of Jesus calming the storm and the children created a Tweet for this story, trying to follow the rules of tweeting. This was their tweet:

SALVATION: Christians believe that Jesus is the rescue plan that God has for Creation and He fulfilled this rescue plan through his death and resurrection. The children were given a sheet of A4 paper and asked to colour it in using bright colours but in a messy way to represent the things we do wrong in life. They then followed the instructions on a video to fold and rip their paper in such a way that when they opened it out, they had created a cross. 

KINGDOM OF GOD: Jesus taught that the Kingdom of God is here already. It is anywhere that God is put first so, for Christians, this is in their hearts. We focussed on what Christians should do to show that they are part of God's Kingdom and decided kindness was important so the children wrote kind messages for everyone in our group.

PENTECOST SERVICE 2023

This year, on 24th May, the Ethos group led our Pentecost service in church. Their parents were invited to watch and the rest of the school watched and joined in singing the songs. They taught the rest of the school about Ascension Day and Pentecost, what happened on these days and showed why they are celebrated as part of the Christian calendar.

One parent told me that her son went home telling her about what Pentecost means as a result of what the Ethos group had shared in the service.