Neatishead CofE Primary School

We are a Church School


Lots of us followed the Bishop of Norwich and two donkeys across the fields to Barton Turf church to remember Palm Sunday. 


Celebrating Mothering Sunday with our families. 


Red Skippers have been learning the history behind Shrove Tuesday and why it is important for Christians. We learnt some songs and poems about pancakes and performed them to each other. They also had the opportunity to prepare, cook and eat pancakes with Mrs Lamb and Mrs Wall!


Thank you Revd Ben for our first Holy Communion service in school. We all enjoyed sharing this experience and learning more about The Eucharist.



Our choir sharing Christmas carols and songs at with the residents of Broadacre care home. 


We had a time of reflection and silence for Remembrance 2023.

You can learn more about what it means to be a Church of England School at dioceseofnorwich.org/schools

Our beautiful floral display in St Michaels church to celebrate the retirement of Revd David. Thank you to Mrs Wall for arranging it so delightfully. 

Reverse-Advent-calendar-2021

Harvest 2022

It was wonderful to celebrate harvest together in St Peter’s. Thank you for so many donations for our local food bank and we hope you enjoyed the soup and cake created with produce grown in our school garden and picked whilst on a nature exploration!

Our Worship Groups are named after apostles, the friends of Jesus.

We know that Paul works very hard to keep our school clean. We made him some cards to say thank you.


Remembering and celebrating the life of Queen Elizabeth ll


All staff across the Federation celebrated our return to school with this prayer and some time for reflection.

Father, 
You call us together at the beginning of this new school year. 
We ask you to send your spirit upon us that, 
as the days and terms unfold, 
we may be always mindful of your presence 
and alert to opportunities to see and serve you in those around us. 
We pray that we may teach well by the example of our own lives, 
by our knowledge and love of learning, 
by our gentleness and care of the pupils entrusted to us. 
In all that we do and say, 
we pray that, in building up the community of our federation, 
we may contribute to a happy and safe environment where we will all soar on wings. 
In the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, 
Amen.


Our Christian value this half term is Responsibility


Meet two of our Reverends

I’m Rev’d Taylor, and I am the Curate at St Peter’s, and in four other churches that make up our little family called ‘the Benefice of St Benedict’. I was ordained a Deacon in 2020, and a Priest in 2021 (and you can ask me what those words mean!) – so I’m quite new to it all! I work alongside Rev’d David, who also teaches me lots of things! We take services, we visit people, we offer support, we get involved in community life, and we pray for everyone who lives and works in this area. It’s a wonderful privilege and joy to serve people of all ages across the Benefice; do come and say hello if you see me, and of course you are always welcome to talk to us if there’s anything we can do or pray about – even if you’d just like a supportive, listening ear. When not working, I spend most of my time looking after two dogs, whom you might just see from time to time…

Rev’d Neville Khambatta (Rev Nev) retired to live in Neatishead after being the vicar of Ludham, Potter Heigham, Catfield and Hickling. 
Nearly all his working life has been spent involved with young people, as a secondary teacher in South London, then here in Norfolk running the Horstead Centre, the Diocesan residential Centre for young people. ( He had to go sailing for work!)
He and Val love the Broads and love sailing, for a long time they ran sailing holidays for young people here on the Broads.
Neville enjoys taking assemblies and had to learn all about phonics when he started coming to school to help with the Reading Project. The children are still helping him to get it right!

I drew a cross in the soil

Welcome to Reverend Ian, a curate spending time with us in school. We are very pleased to welcome you.

The Christingle begins with an orange…


Please read this beautiful prayer written by a Year Six pupil who was enjoying time in our Reflection area


Our Harvest tower of tins



As we prepare for our Harvest celebration, we have enjoyed lots of singing. How wonderful to hear this hymn being sung so enthusiastically at home. Thank you so much for allowing us to share this.


Stepping into something new –  our invitation to speak at the Diocesan Commissioning Service

Jane Gay, our Chair of Governors, presented our Year Six leavers with a Bible from Salhouse Baptist Church. What a wonderful gift for them as they take their next step into high school.

Our reflection area is a lovely, peaceful place to be. We have planted flowers in our new planter – can you see the shape we are creating?

We had an amazing walk to St Peters. We were inspired by the stained glass windows and the crosses

Our first act of Collective Worship. It was wonderful to reflect, pray and sing all together again.

The Red Skippers enjoyed exploring the Easter story


The Pharisee and Tax Collector

The Lost Coin

The Sower

The Two Builders

The Two Thieves (Easter)


Here are some family activities you could do during Lent.


The Red Skippers are exploring the question – What do Jewish people learn from the story of Moses? We have been thinking about why Moses is very important to Jewish people. Seren created Moses in the basket using salt dough.

The Red Skippers decided that thinking about others at Christmas time was very important. We chose the Acts of Kindness calendar as we would be able to share it at school and at home. 


Remembrance Day Donations

Thank you to everyone who supported Remembrance Day with their donations. We raised over £120! 


We raised an amazing £86.36 today. Thank you all for your donations. 


Lest we forget

Remembrance at St Michaels, Barton Turf

We enjoyed saying this prayer thanking God for Harvest


Celebrating Collective Worship all together again…….

Thank you Reverend David. We are already looking forward to next week!



The Church of England has some very useful ideas for prayer and reflection during this difficult time www.churchofengland.org

The Church of England has produced this special prayer for our schools and communities during this difficult time.


We were delighted to be invited to take part in World Day of Prayer at St Peter’s church. This year it was prepared by the Christian women of Zimbabwe and we had the opportunity to reflect on how Jesus heals.



The Trinity is three pieces, which are unbreakable when they are together” – M “The Trinity is God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit – we trust and respect all of them but they are stronger when they are together.


We have been asking What is Trust? We have enjoyed playing trust games with our friends.


Christmas at our school is such a celebration of joy and wonder: singing to our community at Broadacre care home and to the Friends and Neighbours at the Baptist chapel, performing our nativity at St Peter’s church, collecting food for St Martins charity for the homeless through our reverse advent calendar and creating Christingles to remind us how Jesus is the light of our world.



Happy Christmas!


The walk was chilly but Experience Christmas at St Peters church was magical. Hearing and taking part in the story of The Nativity followed by making Jesus in a nutshell was a fabulous learning adventure for us all. Thank you so much to Reverend David and all the amazing volunteers who make this such a special event.


Family and friends joined us in a service of Remembrance.



Respect  Responsibility  Courage  Trust  Perseverance  Compassion

We asked our families how our Christian Values are shown at home. Here are a few of the wonderful responses:

Respect

She always thanks the bus driver

Shows good manners to everyone

Responsibility

He helps to look after his sisters

He put all his school uniform on by himself

She gets up for her alarm in the morning without being asked

Courage

He showed courage to perform words at the Harvest Festival

She showed courage when she had to get a huge splinter out of her foot

Compassion

He helped his sister settle into school and helps with her reading

She walked the dog in the rain because she didn’t want him to miss his walk

Helped a younger girl when she got stuck on a bouncy castle

Perseverance

He is persevering with his reading, which is really improving She persevered to swim underwater and collect sinkers

Trust

He showed trust for his swimming teacher

Even though she finds writing tricky, she persevered learning to write her letters

Our Harvest worship was a celebration of words and music. The Little Red Hen rap told us the story in a musical and lively way! We also learnt about how sugar beet makes our sugar. Thank you so much for all the wonderful tins, packets and jars which will be donated to the local food bank.

 

It was a rather wet day when we walked to St Peter’s Church in Neatishead! We explored inside the church, naming and describing features. This church is always a peaceful place to be and we all relaxed, sitting and looking around us. Thank you to St Peter’s Church warden for leaving us squash and biscuits – they were greatly enjoyed!

The graffiti wall for Reflection and prayer was used and enjoyed by us all

 

We had a fascinating talk in assembly this morning from Mr Gay. He travelled to Kenya in Africa to train church leaders as part of MERF (Middle East Reform Fellowship). We enjoyed seeing his photographs and asking lots of questions about food, homes and water in rural Africa. Thank you for coming in to talk to us.

Peacocks leading our Easter service of celebration

We enjoyed exploring more about the Easter story in St Peter’s church

 

We are very lucky to have close links with three churches close to our school. We celebrate Harvest, Christmas and Easter in our churches, and we enjoy visiting, exploring and learning with our Reverends and Ministers all year long.

St Peter’s church, Neatishead
achurchnearyou.com/church/8029/

 

St Michael and All Angels, Barton Turf
achurchnearyou.com/church/8026/

 

Neatishead Baptist Church
neatisheadbaptist.org.uk

 

 

Click here to view our Diocesan Inspection Report

Our Christian values

Autumn Responsibility
Autumn Respect
Spring Perseverance
Spring Trust
Summer Courage
Summer Compassion

“RE makes me feel that I know more about the world and how people behave.”

“RE is fun because we learn about different peoples views and culture.”

“It’s very educational learning about different religions.”

“RE is interesting because we explore different religions.”

“It’s exciting to find out how different it is around the world.”

RE in Neatishead C of E Primary School

The purpose of RE is religious literacy. This means, helping children and young people to hold balanced and well-informed conversations about religion and belief.. We aim to provide a balance between three disciplines. These are:

  • Theology
  • Philosophy
  • Human/Social Sciences

TheologyThis is about believing. It looks at where beliefs come from, how they have changed over time, how they are applied differently in different contexts and how they relate to each other.

PhilosophyThis is about thinking. It is about finding out how and whether things make sense. It deals with questions of morality and ethics. It takes seriously the nature of reality, knowledge and existence.

Human/Social Sciences: This is about living. It explores the diverse ways in which people practise their beliefs. It engages with the impact of beliefs on individuals, communities and societies.

The aims of Religious Education in our school is:

  • To enable pupils to know about and understand Christianity as a living faith that influences the lives of people worldwide and as the religion that has most shaped British culture and heritage.
  • To enable pupils to know and understand about other major world religions and world views, their impact on society, culture and the wider world, enabling pupils to express ideas and insights.
  • To contribute to the development of pupils’ own spiritual/philosophical convictions, exploring and enriching their own beliefs and values.

We follow the Norfolk Agreed Syllabus.

Our RE policy and our Collective Worship policy are available on the Policies section of our website.

 


Learning about and learning from the Bible is so exciting and engaging through ‘Open the Book’. This week we learnt about the story of Daniel and the lions, and we thought about how God listens to us when we talk to Him.


Nativity

We love to celebrate Christmas with our friends, families and our community. This year we have performed our Nativity in Barton Turf church, investigated and created Christingles, sang to the residents of Broadacre care home and to the Friends and Neighbours in Neatishead Baptist chapel and we learnt more about the story of the Nativity at our Christmas Experience at St Peter’s Church.


Norwich Cathedral Visit

In May we became pilgrims on a whole school visit to Norwich Cathedral. It was wonderful to follow in the steps of people who have worshipped in the cathedral for hundreds of years. It was fun to dress up too!


Enjoying Easter songs in readiness for our Easter celebration service

 


Collective Worship is very important to our school. The children record their thoughts and observations in a special e-book.


Please find below some useful information for you to download.

Collective Worship in a Church of England School

Making Worship Meaningful and Special

Some Helpful Sites for Collective Worship

The Big Question

We often think about what it means to be a Church School and ask ourselves lots of questions, this is called ‘The Big Question’.

The Big Question at the moment is ‘Why do we need to be responsible?’ What do you think?