The Catholic Life of the School

Catholic Life at St Mary’s

A Catholic school like St Mary’s Academy is a community of love and hope. It provides young people with a Catholic education, which perceives life as a faith journey. The ultimate aim of this Catholic school is to develop the full potential of all young people, leading to their life-long activities being guided by the Spirit and presence of Christ, in the service of God and of others.

The role of our Catholic school is to help everyone in the school community to discover the true value and dignity of each and every human being who, loved by God, has a mission on earth and a destiny which is eternal.  Our Catholic school is an open community, concerned with the education of the whole person. It presents a unique, clear vision of God, people and life, centred on Gospel values and reflective of the teaching of the Catholic Church. Hence, the formation of each person is regarded as being as important as the information which is transmitted through the teaching offered.

Our Catholic school is supported in its mission by the active partnership of the home, the school and the parish. Together, they provide support for the faith community, helping to form and develop in all a mature Christian conscience. We are also blessed to have a lead person for Catholic life, who is also our school Lay Chaplain, and an inspirational Parish Priest, who is very well known to our children and staff. These two people provide direct links to our practising Catholic community and demonstrate on a day to day basis what it means to be part of a thriving Catholic community.

Catholic education is distinctive in placing all learning and teaching in a Catholic moral context and in both challenging and supporting young people to develop in mind, body and spirit. The role of a Catholic school is to help everyone in the school community to discover the true value and dignity of each and every human being who, loved by God, has a mission on earth and a destiny which is eternal.

Catholic Life Questionnaire for Parents and Carers

The Ordo

Extra-Ordo-Nary takes it’s name from the Diocesan Ordo. This document acts like a calendar for each diocese -helping people to know what season, feast day or celebration takes place on each day.

NDCYS have created a special version for young people and coupled each week of the year with a different theme – linked to the liturgical season – to help connect and inspire your prayer and liturgy.

Each week is also accompanied by a video on our YouTube channel that takes you through the important days in the week and brings the resource to life

Extra-Ordo-Nary takes it’s name from the Diocesan Ordo. This document acts like a calendar for each diocese -helping people to know what season, feast day or celebration takes place on each day.

NDCYS have created a special version for young people and coupled each week of the year with a different theme – linked to the liturgical season – to help connect and inspire your prayer and liturgy.

Each week is also accompanied by a video on our YouTube channel that takes you through the important days in the week and brings the resource to life

Extra-Ordo-Nary 2022-23

https://youtu.be/JuErLPAhZLI

The Mark 10 Mission

The Mark 10 Mission, in partnership with the Franciscan Friars of Renewal, create weekly liturgies base on the Sunday Gospel. These reflect on what we are being called to do by the Gospel message. Each liturgy has a Gospel reading, a reflection on the reading, some prayer time, a time for worship through song, and a mission of the week.

The Mark 10 Mission

Worship Songs

Liturgy -KS2

Little Liturgy – KS1 and EYFS

EYFS -Joy

We practised spreading joy to everyone by trying to give stickers of joy to other people in our class, the team who got the most stickers on to the other team and ‘spread the most joy’ won, but we all had so much fun we didn’t mind who the winner was.

Year 1 – Respect

Our school and our faith help to guide us to respect each other in what we do and say, and so does our mission statement. We show respect to everyone because we value everyone in the name of Jesus the Christ. We know that we are all made by God, in his image, and we are all loved and respected by God

A good way to show respect is to think about how you would like to be treated and then treat others that way.

We listened to the story of Creation and thought about how we can respect all of God’s creations. We made special binoculars to help us see the world how God sees it, and to help us understand how special God’s creations are.

Year 2 Kindness

We thought about how we show kindness. We choose to be kind because we see that everybody and everything is part of God’s creation. We are all made by God, in his image and we show we value someone when we are kind to them.

We thought about the story of the sheep and the goats, and the corporal works of mercy. We made a pledge of kindness on our own sheep, to help remind us of how we can follow our mission statement.

Year 3 – Forgiveness

We acted out the story of the prodigal son, and reflected on how hard it can be to ask for forgiveness and how it can be even harder to forgive. We made paper chains of everything we wanted to say sorry for because we know when we say ‘we value all in the name of Jesus the Christ’, forgiveness is a big part of it.

2023/2024

Here are the photos of Mini Vinnie’s leading collective worship based on catholic Social teaching. They explained the principles to all of the children. Each class now have a principle to focus on and will be involved in different activities linked to these.

Please find the link to Catholic Social Teaching

https://cafod.org.uk/pray/catholic-social-teaching

All Saints

Pupils from FS2 to year 6 attended the Parish Mass in St Mary on the Sea Church. Pupils from each class led the readings, brought up the offertory gifts, altar served, and helped to steward Communion.  Members of the parish commented on how well the children behaved and and how beautifully they sang.

COF Training with Hanna Leach Lead Chaplin

Visit to Lincoln – Synod

This Synod is intended as a Synodal Process. The aim of this synodal process is not to provide a temporary or one-time experience of synodality, but rather to provide an opportunity for the entire People of God to discern together how to move forward on the path towards being a more synodal Church in the long-term.

Pope Francis is inviting all the baptised to participate in this Synodal Process that begins at the diocesan level.

Three children represented our school brilliantly at The Synod for our diocesan schools which took place the week before half term and truly were excellent examples of the living voice of the People of God.

Harvest Festival

The Chaplaincy team led the Harvest Festival celebration based on the feeding of the 5000, and invited us to think about how we can live out our school mission statement by valuing all in the name of Jesus the Christ. The school donated non perishable items to Habour Place in Grimsby. They work with people who are homeless and those at risk of homelessness. Please click on link below to visit the website. And thank you  the families who kindly donated.

Harbour Place Grimsby

Wreath Making

We invited all parents and carers to come to school to make classroom wreaths. What a lovely afternoon all was had.

 

2022/2023

Mass in Celebration of the Epiphany of the Lord

We gathered as a school, with members of the local parish to celebrate the Feast of Epiphany. We heard in the gospel of Matthew about the visit of the Wise Men, who journeyed from the East to come and worship Jesus. They were led to worship him by a star which they followed as it rose in the east and settled over the place where the infant Christ-child was born.

The visit of the three Kings came some time after Jesus was born which is why we celebrate it 12 days after Christmas Day. This Epiphany of Jesus shows that he came for all humankind, not just God’s chosen people, the Jews. The gifts are also significant. Gold to show Jesus’s kingship, the King of Kings. Frankincense to show his royal priesthood, the most High Priest, and Myrrh to show how important his death would be and how that would bring salvation to all!

Fr Andrew blessed the entrances of the school with the traditional chalk blessing, usually done on the feast of the Epiphany of the Lord.

Chalk is blessed with holy water, which can then be taken and used to bless dwelling places. The blessing is done by marking 20+C+M+B+23. The 20 and 23 represent the year (2023). C M and B have 2 meanings. Firstly, the names of the wise men, Casper, Melchior and Balthazar, who visited the toddler Jesus on the feast of the Epiphany of the Lord.  The letters also stand for ‘Christus Mansionem Benedicat’ the Latin for ‘may Christ bless this home’.

The End of year Mass – each class took part in leading the end of year Mass, helping to build children’s confidence in reading at Mass. The theme of this Mass was ‘You are the light of the world’ and this was a good reminder for all pupils to spread the light of God to everyone, especially over the summer holidays. It was also a great reminder for our year 6 pupils in their last Mass as St Mary’s pupils, that they should try to keep spreading the light of Jesus as they begin their journey to secondary school.

Joint Mass with the other schools in Grimsby