At school, the children are taught traditional Catholic prayers. These prayers can be used at home to support parents in developing their children’s knowledge of prayer and to continue to develop their children’s understanding of what the words mean to us as Christians today.
Pupils at Holy Cross participate in a wide variety of prayer and liturgy throughout each week including whole school, phase and class acts of worship. We also encourage pupils to take time for prayer and reflection on a more personal level and provide opportunities for larger celebrations with the wider school and church community. Our pupils are reverent and reflective at times of prayer and liturgy. The pupils are knowledgeable about their faith, which they act upon visibly through prayer and worship. Children lead acts of celebration of the Word throughout the year and plan and carry out their own acts of prayer and liturgy.
All our classes, along with Father Richard, will hold a weekly Class Mass for our parents, carers and the community. These will be held in individual classrooms and will begin at 9:30am. All are welcome. All Class Masses dates have been added to our school website and Class Dojo:
Each class will also hold their own prayer and liturgy linked either to a theme or the end of a RED unit/topic.
Prayer club takes place every Monday and Friday lunchtime. It is led by our Year 6 Catholic Life leader.
The Chaplaincy Team lead the whole school in small groups on the Journey of the Cross. We stopped and thought about Jesus’ journey in different parts of our school using the art work different classes had produced.
The Chaplaincy have provided us with some excellent prayer and liturgy for special occasions, organised Masses, written Adoration Acts of Worship and worked hard to keep our environment prayer friendly. Every Monday, they are now going to lead our prayer and liturgy and celebrations of the previous week.
We end each week with an Achievement Assembly on a Friday. Two children from each class are awarded an achievement certificate and one child is awarded either a STAR or STEPS certificate. Children are also awarded for the following; A Heart Which Sees, Spelling Shed, Timestable Rockstars, Home Achievements, Wonderful Walking. All of our achievements are recorded in our school Achievement Book.
Our chaplaincy team led a beautiful Lenten Celebration of the Word to help prepare us for our Lenten journey of Prayer, Fasting and Almsgiving.
Our children were lucky to all receive a free Rosary donated by Missio. This allowed all of our children to pray the Rosary at school and at home.
To celebrate May as the month of Mary, the chaplaincy team led a daily Rosary in the quiet area at lunch time. They have spent two days being trained so they are ready to lead it themselves. This is a beautiful Catholic tradition given to us by Our Lady herself and just right for the Year of Prayer.
Some of our children decided to make an Easter garden during the Easter break. We were very proud of Cassidy, Ollie and Lexie for these beautiful creations.
Our Year 1 pupils celebrate and lead the Christingle service. They make extra Christingle for Father to take and distribute to the sick and house bound parishioners.
