Broxburn Primary School

Effective contributors: developing pupils and community through spirituality and values

Broxburn Primary School in West Lothian has a roll of 384 pupils, a pre-school facility and an integrated special unit. The headteacher, Dave Edwards, and the chaplaincy team, Rev Terry Taylor (Church of Scotland) and Rev Frank Murray (Baptist Church), have a shared vision for the development of spirituality.

Spiritual Intelligence

Staff are working at developing spiritual intelligence. This involves the chaplains in the following activities and whole school actions:

watching and illustrating the 'characteristics of the spiritual person', for children, eg discussing the motives driving the characters in a book/story
giving attention and time for discussion of ethical dilemmas in school - care of the environment, cruelty to animals, cloning, etc.
discussing the relationships between people in a story, poem or painting
'rehearsing' anger, irritation, joy and success in short dramatic sequences
spending time discussing who was right/wrong in a story or in a real classroom/playground dispute
singing songs - composing, performing and listening
listening to music, which helps us to connect with different cultures/times, connects us to our feelings, contains our thoughts and ideas, and helps us to reflect or meditate
using circle time for the pupils to discuss:
1. people who care for them and support them
2. acts of kindness that they have recognised or received
3. the value for the month.

Living the values

All in the school community are expected to live out the values.

Children are praised and given public recognition for displaying a value. Staff are encouraged to act with pupils, families and even in the staffroom in a way that shows the values.

Each month in the school is assigned a different value. Examples of values are:

quality	co-operation	unity	understanding
peace	honesty	happiness	appreciation
hope	courage	patience	love
caring	friendship	humility	thoughtfulness
simplicity	tolerance and acceptance	trust	responsibility
freedom	respect

Each value is introduced in a whole school assembly taken by the chaplains and then this is followed up in circle time or class time by the chaplains, who visit the school weekly.

The dream tree

At the start of the session, each pupil places a leaf on the dream tree. On the leaf is written their hopes and dreams for the coming year in the school. Pupils are then challenged to determine how they will fulfil these dreams and make them reality. These dreams are fed into the monthly values.

Hope

The first theme of session 2006/07 was Hope.

Stimulus: in assembly the pupils were challenged to consider what they hoped for and what happens when hope is destroyed. P1 - P3 explored the story of Jonah and the Whale. P4 - P7 watched a drama about the New Testament story of Paul being shipwrecked.

Guided reflection: this was then followed by classroom discussion which included a 'pass the parcel' game to help pupils reflect on the theme of hope.

Response: the response to this was the opportunity given to pupils to talk about their feelings and to go away and think about the hopes they would hold on to.