St Joseph's RC Primary School Reddish

Our rich curriculum embraces our Catholicity at its heart and complies with the Religious Education Directory requirements. In addition to RE lessons which are supported by ‘The Way, the Truth and the Life’ scheme, we use the 'Caritas in Action' programme which looks at the social teachings of the church and half termly multi-faith teaching.

All classes also have planned acts of collective worship on weekly basis as well as termly year group and whole school masses at Church.  As the children progress through the school they take pleasure in planning class collective worship themselves.

We follow 5 areas along the guidelines of the '5 W's framework’: Word. Worship, Witness, Welfare and Welcome and you can see below a brief overview of each area.

Word of God - Listening to and being part of the story of Jesus Christ as the centre of everything in our school and challenging ourselves by the power of his word.  Along with regular reflection on scripture in our prayer and liturgy, you can see this in our children's RE books too where each lesson we ask them to think and write about what the scripture means to them. 

Welcome - How we put Jesus at the centre of our community and reach out and celebrate the diverse needs of our community.  Visitors, students and new pupils and staff often comment on how they are made to feel very welcome as they come into our school and children play a key role in this through their confident greetings and good manners. 

Welfare - How we cultivate an attitude of love, care and respect for each other in our community.  As well as the care and respect fostered within their own classrooms, from staff and pupils, we have a strong welfare support network in the school.  This includes a team consisting of our school counsellor, well being officers, learning support teacher and speech and language therapist, helping to ensure that all the needs of the children in our care are met.  

Worship  - Opportunities that we provide to use the Scriptures to celebrate together so we can demonstrate the glory of God in our lives.  This includes class daily prayer, worship in our Chapel and Church and gathering for assemblies and celebrations.

Witness - Witnessing the key values of Jesus such as living out our Mission statement and following his commandment ‘Love one another as I have loved you’. We recognise that this is with us in every aspect of school life.

Mrs Baron leads weekly assemblies for KS1 and KS2 which focus on a different 'W' each week.  The children then discuss these and produce work for their 'Catholic Life Big Book'.  In addition to this, we have celebration assemblies to recognise children's achievements and efforts and through the Year different classes lead an assembly for their phase and parents. These focus on the Catholic life of the school and the Liturgical Calendar.  See the assemblies led by 5MG and 3HH below.