St Paul's Catholic Primary School

Each of our house saint groups have 2 house captains which support the children to learn more about their house saint throughout the year. Our new house captains were voted in by their house and then led an assembly to the rest of the school to introduce themselves on Wednesday 20th September 2023

On Monday 25th September Fr Tom celebrated our start of school year mass. In the Gospel we heard how Jesus called all the children to him, just like he calls us. Each class prepared a reflection on how they are going to become closer to Jesus this year like the children in the Gospel. You can see these below:

Yr 1 – We can be closer to Jesus by helping our friends and always being kind to one another. 

Yr 2 – We want to ask Jesus to help us to be kind to others, to focus on our learning and help keep the world safe. We will follow Jesus’ message from the Bible to help us be close to him and share this with people we meet.

Yr 3 –

Jesus, we need you. Help us to become closer to you. Help us to grow closer to you by opening our minds, our words and our hearts to you. Help us to see you in the beauty around us. Help us to grow closer to you by listening carefully to the words you have spoken and the love you have shown us. Help us to receive love and to give love to others without questions. Help us to follow in your footsteps every day of our lives.

Yr 4 –

Lord Jesus, we ask you for your help. Allow us to experience your presence in the many blessings you put before us. Open our eyes to the new challenges and exciting opportunities we have in our school. Open our hearts and minds to see your presence in our new friends and new teachers. Jesus, inspire us to do our best this year!

Yr 5 – Lord, grant us your aid, Grant us determination when we struggle.

Grant us faith when we face challenges. And grant us love and kindness to share with others. We pray that through this school year you help us to become closer to you in our work and our play. Help us to live our lives as you lived yours.

Yr 6 – 

Lord Jesus, we ask for your eternal blessing. You have come to live within us by your Holy Spirit, and we have become members of your family forever. Please help us to grow stronger in our faith, and to become more and more like you. Allow us to serve you, share in your love, and celebrate your presence in our lives . Help us to realise that you are always with us, especially this year in any challenging times we face as we look on to our journey ahead beyond St Paul’s

Each class also had their new class candle blessed. We light these every day when we pray and as part of our RE lessons.

Our Chaplaincy team also were blessed and given their badges. 

Today we began our Friday Rosary - Morning Prayers and Breakfast led by our Year 6 Chaplaincy Team. 

Thank you to parents that were able to attend this week and share this time for collective worship, prayers and reflection within our School. We will continue to do this throughout the month of October. 

Today we celebrated Harvest by Year 5 leading a whole school assembly with Biblical readings, poems and Harvest songs and sign.

We welcomed a representative from the Broxbourne food bank who thanked everyone at St Paul's School for their generous food donations.

Thank you to all parents and carers that were able to attend and for all your generous donations.  Thank you to our Year 5 children for all your hard work preparing and leading a wonderful assembly and celebration of Harvest! 

St. Paul’s Catholic Nursery and Primary School would like to share with you our up and coming Whole School Diversity Project which is to be focussed upon Pope Francis World Mission Sunday to be marked on Sunday 22nd October 2023. As we lead up to this Mission Sunday we will be focusing on Pope Francis world message as shared below;

The MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS POPE FRANCIS FOR WORLD MISSION DAY 2023 is Hearts on fire, feet on the move (cf. Lk 24:13-35)

Please see the letter and powerpoint for more information

Here at St Paul's we follow rooted in love to support our children's understanding of Catholic Social Teaching. This half term the focus is Care of Creation. Each Friday a child is nominated by their class teacher who has shown this to win the weekly Catholic Social Teaching award.

As the sad events unfold around us in our world that are causing devastation and unrest, we will come together on Thursday 19th October 2023 at 11am in our classrooms and all stop what we are doing and pray. A member of the chaplaincy team will come and lead the prayer with each class. 

As Jesus said in the Bible (Matthew Chapter 18:19-20) '19 “Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. 20 For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” Praying is a very powerful tool.

Our Prayer for Peace

God of love,

We pray for peace in our world, and an end to war.

Instead of hatred, let there be love.

Shelter your children and protect us.

Guide us and keep us from harm,

so we can build a world of love and live our lives in peace.

Amen.

On St Luke's Feast Day our house captains lead their house in a special service dedicated to St Luke and then enjoyed a celebration together after

We welcomed Fr Clement to celebrate our All Saints Day Mass with us. During our Mass, our House Captains led our reflections about our 4 house saints linked to the Gospel reading from our Mass. We pray that we can be more like the saints with the help of Jesus' love and guidance

 Fr Clement led our remembrance day service in which we thought about all those who served for our country. Thank you to all the families who contributed to our whole school poppy wreaths with your reflections and prayers. 

The theme this year is - 

'For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.’ (Isaiah 9:5-6) 

Over the coming weeks, the children will be busy designing their Christmas cards in class ready for the competition. We will share the winner from EYFS, KS1 and KS2 here!

Fr Clement joined all our key stage 2 classes this week and led one of their RE lessons. This was very inspiring for us. Thank you Fr Clement. 

Fr Clement led us in our start of Advent Mass and helped us to start preparing during this special time. He blessed our Advent reflection booklets which were given to each child. 

Our school crib has been travelling round our families homes each evening to spend time with different members of our community. It has been lovely to see it being used and for families to be able to have time together for reflection during Advent.

Thank you to our Chaplaincy team who prepared and led a reflective Advent service with the support of Fr Clement for our parish and parent community.

Well done to our year 5 class who won our Nativity competition! Fr Clement and Ms Costanzo were very impressed with all class efforts.

We are delighted to share that Poppy in nursery won the Diocese of Westminster Christmas Card Competition for EYFS phase. Well done to Poppy!

Thank you to our wonderful choir for their carol service for our local community. They all shone with their singing.

Our Chaplaincy Team led our Racial Justice Sunday assembly which helped us to reflect on and recognise that we are all children of God, regardless of our race and background. This year’s theme seeks to promote reflection, discussion and action on our theme and to encourage us to carry this through in the weeks and months after Racial Justice Sunday.

The theme for Racial Justice Sunday is: “Seeing one another in the life of the Church”.

Each class took time to reflect on this through a variety of different activities in class.

Lent

On Wednesday 14th February we marked the start of Lent with our Ash Wednesday services. Fr Clement reminded us that during Lent we open our hearts with love to pray, fast and help others. All children received a Lent purple pin, a Lent booklet and a Lent collection moneybox to support them during the season of Lent and preparation.

During Lent, we encourage the children to wear their Lent purple pin to remind them to keep Jesus in their mind during Lent as we get ready for Holy Week and Easter Sunday. The children can use the Lent booklets as daily reflections to support them during this Holy time in coming closer to Jesus.

This year we are once again taking part in the Catholic Children Society Appeal and we are asking over the next few weeks to collect small change in the Lent boxes to bring in at the end of Lent. The Catholic Children Society Lent appeal is inspired by Pope Francis’s call to ‘make our voices heard’ and find ways to connect and help others in their time of need. Every penny raised by our school will support our work with local disadvantaged children and families within our community. We will be asking children to bring their Lent boxes back in on this day, Friday 22^nd March. Any donations, no matter how much, is most appreciated to go towards the work of the Catholic Children Society.

We were very lucky to have a visit from the Catholic Children Society today who shared their mission, work with us, and how they live out the Gospel values and call for social justice through Catholic Social Teaching and actions.

We will also be supporting the CAFOD Lent appeal following the assembly with CAFOD on Monday 26^th February, more details to follow.

Fr Clement visits us each term to lead our RE learning for us. We are very grateful for his deep faith and understanding that he shares.

As part of the Year of Prayer we will be learning the Our Father in sign language. Please see letter below.

Our Chaplaincy Team alongside Fr Clement led our Lenten reflection service to support our Lent journey alongside serving a soup lunch for our community. 

This Lent children at St Paul’s Catholic School have yet again continued to deepen their knowledge, faith and spiritual journey with Jesus Christ.  Children, staff and parents have gathered collectively for our Ash Wednesday Service, Mass, Reconciliation and a ‘soup and supper’ prayer service.

Holy Week began with a celebratory ‘Palm Sunday’ assembly were children waved palm leaves, shared prayers and sung ‘Hosanna, gathering to reflect upon how we can truly welcome Jesus this Lent and how far we will walk with Him.

Our ‘Stations of the Crosses’ assemblies and Year 3 and Year 4 Easter production enabled us all to reflect upon the passion of Christ’s love and place ourselves at the Holy Cross and at the feet of Jesus.

Charity Lenten walks and generous donations were all ways of our almsgiving along with prayers for all those in need, near and afar.  All of which is a true dedication of our love and commitment this Lent and for this we are very proud to be a part of St Paul’s Catholic School.

During the month of May 2024, St Paul's Catholic Nursery and Primary School will honouring Our Lady, Mary Mother of God during an Ascension Mass, praying the Rosary daily and taking part in a whole school pilgrim and holy offerings of devotion and prayers through Mary. 

St Paul's have also been carrying out an RE / Mary - RJED whole school art project celebrating diversity and the love for Mary across the world.  For this project each class choose a different image of Mary from diverse cultures across the world and wrote the ‘Hail Mary’ prayer in that native language.  Children showed cultural appreciation and shared in celebrating religious diversity and diverse representations of Mary from around the world.

On Thursday 23rd May our chaplaincy team and choir led us for our crowning of Mary service. It was lovely to see the children's flowers and crowns that they brought in. Thank you for your support with this and for the parents/ families that joined us.

On Monday 1^st July 2024 we had our special Mass to celebrate all the children who have made their First Holy Communion this year. 

Fr Clement came to teach each of our classes for one of their Summer lessons. 

On Monday 1^st July 2024 St Paul’s Chaplaincy team, Mrs Costanzo and Miss Barton attended the St Francis of Assisi Chaplaincy retreat day at St Mary’s Secondary School.  We joined up with other local Primary Catholic Schools who are part of the St Francis of Assisi Trust and took part in various fun activities including learning new hymns, art and sporting team building games.  We ended the day by attending Mass celebrating all of our school’s Chaplaincy teams achievements and successes this academic year.  It was a lovely day and a pleasure to be part of.

Mrs Worton Geer, myself and all of St Paul’s School pupils and community would like thank the Chaplaincy team for being such a dedicated and inspirational team this year, supporting us all on our spiritual journey with Christ.

On Monday 1^st July 2024 we celebrated our school saint, St Paul's feast day. Each class spent the afternoon looking at a different point of St Paul's life and what we can learn from our special school saint. We then had a celebration party with ice cream! 

We were very blessed that Fr Clement joined us and supported our Chaplaincy retreat morning. He shared with the children about wisdom and leadership and how they could learn from the Bible readings to put this into their Chaplaincy work. 

Fr Clement blessed each member and handed out their badges

Some of our Chaplaincy Team prepared and led our fairtrade awareness assembly as part of fairtrade fortnight. This year, the theme is in urging everyone to Be the Change, by picking up Fairtrade products and speaking up for fairer trade. The researched about fairtrade and wrote their own prayers to share with the children.

Fairtrade Fortnight - Fairtrade 

During this Start of New School Year Mass we thought  about Jesus welcoming us and showing us his never-ending love. We asked God  to bless us at the St Paul’s School and help us come closer to God. We prayed that we can follow in the footsteps of our school saint, St Paul, and ask for his guidance during this school year. As part of our Mission, each child has been given a prayer card to complete to write a prayer to St Paul to help them during this school year.

Following our start of year Mass, the children completed a home family learning task in which they reflected on how Saint Paul could help them this year. We created a display around our main prayer table.

On Monday 23rd September our house captains prepared a service for the children in St Matthew house to celebrate his feast day which was on Saturday 21st September. They then celebrated with cake together as a house family.

On Thursday 3rd October out Chaplaincy Team joined with other teams across our local Catholic schools to take part in retreat and a welcome service. As part of this, they recieved their badges. 

During the month of October our Chaplaincy Team run Rosary club for our children on a Monday lunch and a breakfast for our parents on a Friday.

Dear Parents and Carers of St Paul's,

We are raising awareness of World Food day, which is happening on the 16^th of October, and International Poverty Eradication Day on the 17^th October. As part of our Catholic Mission, we would be very grateful if you could donate non-perishable food items, such as rice, pasta or tin food, to the school on the day, for it to be donated to local food banks in our community. 

We appreciate your support to our cause. 

Chaplaincy Team

Here is the link to the Rosary challenge - we will completing this in class each morning

The Mark 10 Mission - The Rosary Challenge 

On Friday 18th October our house captains prepared a service for the children in St Luke house to celebrate his feast day. They then celebrated with cake together as a house family.

As we get closer to November, we start to think about remembering those who gave their life for us. We will be launching our whole school poppy project in which families are asked to write a prayer or reflection for November and return this to school. We will then offer these up at our service on 11th November and then display them around our school.

We had our whole school other faith week in which we learnt about Hinduism. This was launched with workshops which helped us to understand the Hinduism faith. Here is some pupil voice about their learning:

Hinduism pupil voice

5.11.24

Reception
I liked the teddy’s /dolls. I know the God called Seeta

I liked the Hinduism Dots, I know Rarma

Year 2

I like the dolls and clothes , I liked dancing with the sticks

Year 1

I liked the clothes. I learned about the Gods, I liked the teddys

Year 2

I like the dolls and clothes, I liked dancing with the sticks

Year 3

I learnt about Krishna (the God) I liked to play with the teddy’s and hold the dolls

Year 4

I learnt that Hinduism is an old religion, I liked talking about all the different Gods

Year 5

I liked to explore different thing’s I like the different gods, We learnt new things about their God 

Year 6
It was fun and it taught us a lot about Hinduism, it was good to find out about another religion and what they believe in. This helps us to understand what they believe. The workshop helped us to bring this to life.

At St Paul's Primary School we are improving our Saint House Teams by meeting half termly as a whole school community.  We link our Saints team work focusing on our Pastoral Themes.  This half term we explored 'Faith', what this means to us and how we can demonstrate and share this at home, in school and within the community.

Our Saint Teams work is displayed in individual class Saint books and displayed centrally in the school hall for all the school to see and share each teams great work. Below are some lovely examples of work that was completed by our pupils.

The R.E. senior leadership team at St Pauls Catholic Primary School have been working hard to ensure and demonstrate to pupils, parents, staff and visitors that Jesus Christ remains at the centre of all we do.  We invited Father Clement and the Chaplaincy Team to bless our St Paul's School Mission Statements, our Catholic Social Teaching Virtues and the icon of St Paul which remain proudly on display as you enter our Catholic School.  This not only improves our school grounds and Catholic ethos but enables us to remember Christ's love for us and the heart of our religious journey.

Advent is the period leading up to Christmas, Christ's coming.  It is a special time of anticipation and preparation in many Christian traditions. At St Paul's Catholic School we have been busy preparing for Advent to make the most of this joyful and sacred season.  We have set up Advent Wreaths around the school, lighting one candle each week, starting with the first Sunday of Advent, and reflect on themes like hope, peace, joy, and love.  We are using a daily Advent Calendar of 'giving' for those less fortunate supporting The Catholic Children's Carirty Gift Appeal.  Engaging in such charitable activities, such as donating to a food bank, volunteering, or helping a neighbour in need ebables us to grow closer to Christ this Christmas.

We are spending more time on Parayer and Refection this Advent, each day reading Bible passages related to the birth of Christ and using our daily Jesse Tree for a devotional guide focused on Bible stories leading to Jesus' birth.

Whilst we celebrate such a speacial time of year, we wish to resist the busy holiday rush by focusing on meaningful activities in school and at home, our Travelling Crib is the perfect oppotunity for you to make space for stillness and reflection to center ourselves more spiritually.

Advent Travelling Crib - Advent 2024

Please sign up to recieve our travelling crib which is our lovely Advent tradition used in our Catholic School to bring the story of Mary and Joseph's journey to Bethlehem to life and a chance to deepen our spiritual journey this Advent, through prayers and refelctions at home.

Our primary goal of at St Paul's Catholic Primary School is to provide high quality teaching and moral development, grounded in the Catholic faith, social teaching and Catholic doctrine.  Through our creative, inclusive and enriched RE curriculum pupils are taught Catholic teachings, including scipture from the Bible, Church doctrine and values such as charity, respect, and the dignity of the person.

Through our work in Catholic education we emphasise the importance of service and helping those in need, following the example of Jesus Christ.  This enables our pupils here at St Paul's Catholic School access a strong academic curriculum, focusing on both the intellectual development of pupils and deepen their spiritual growth.

Here are some lovely and proud examples of this terms RE teaching, learning and development across the school.

On Thursday 12th December 2024 we worked closely with St Francis of Assissi's Catholic Academy Trust Primary School, holding a prayerful and refelective Christmas Carol Service for staff and parents at St Augustines School, Hoddesdon.

Our school and the other participating local Catholic school's in the trust made us all proud on the day and all of their preparations during this special Advent season.

On Monday 16th December 2024 Father Clement and our School Chaplaincy Team led our annual Advent Prayer Service for parent and parishioners followed by a hot drink and mince pies.  The service was a time to pause and reflect during the season of Advent and to pray for loved ones who are dearly missed and are now in heaven.  It was a time to prepare, gather and remember the true meaning of Christmas - Jesus coming!

A Special Visit and Awards for Two past St Paul's Catholic Primary School Pupils now inspiring Year 7 Students at Nicholas Breakspear Catholic Secondary School - St Albans

This week Katie Worton-Geer, Headteacher and Netta Costanzo, Deputy Headteacher were delighted to visit two past pupils at Nichcolas Breakspear Catholic Secondary School in St Albans, welcomed kindly by Headteacher Mr Declan Linnane. Our visit was a wonderful surprise for two of the now Year 7 students, Kayla and Grace, who were presented with special awards for their extraordinary contributions during their time at St Paul’s.

Grace was nominated by St Paul's Catholic Primary School for the award and recognised for her incredible work in Year 6, where she led a whole-school project to promote awareness of people with hearing difficulties. Kayla, equally inspiring, worked to raise awareness about autism, particularly focusing on improving understanding around communication. Their acts of kindness and leadership were acknowledged with the ‘Love in Action’ Caritas Award, a testament to their outstanding commitment to making a difference.