Collective Worship is central to life at St Laurence Church Junior School. It is a special time where our school community comes together to celebrate and reflect upon our beliefs. We worship though prayer, song, discussion, stillness and contemplation. We encourage all members of our community to grow spiritually, learn about the world around them and to celebrate their achievements. Collective worship is inclusive, inviting and inspirational.

Spiritual health can be developed when children are given opportunities to celebrate their own achievements – we call these ‘WOW’ moments.  We look for these moments in and out of school. If you would like to let us know when your child has experienced a WOW moment at home, please feel free to print the template above, complete it and send it to your child’s class teacher.

At St Laurence Church Junior School, we understand the importance of ensuring our children understand and question the world around them. We use Picture News weekly to pose a 'big question' to contemplate and explore. The questions cover local, national and global news. Picture News is delivered by the Prayer Councillors to their class and encourages courageous advocacy.  In 2023, we were awarded the Silver Picture News Impact Award for the work our children did for Northfield Community Partnership during the Lenten Project.

Every class has a book presented to them at the start of each half term related to our school value. These were our books for thankfulness. Mr Murphy read our values books in worship and we reflected about what we are thankful for. This value was particularly poignant during harvest.

This year, we collected harvest goods for Birmingham City Mission and St Bart's Pantry. Matt from Birmingham City Mission began our harvest season with worship about Feeding the 5000. We had a service in church with Reverend Theresa, where the children acted out the parable of the Sower and the Seeds. St Bart's Pantry Coordinator collected our donations, and our Head Pupils and Deputy Head Pupils will be visiting St Bart's Pantry to see how our food is being used.

We celebrated the foundation of our school with the children and staff from St Laurence Infant School. We learnt about how our school started with boys being taught in the church building. Children from the infant and junior school were fantastic at acting the parts of Reverend Worth (the schools founder), the church wardens and pupils from 1714. What a journey the St Laurence Schools have been on! We also said goodbye to Canon Janet, who has supported and worked with our schools for many years.

Sam Oldham, Olympic Gymnast came into school to talk about his achievements, his gymnastic journey and winning an Olympic medal. We thought about our school value of perseverance and how we can achieve our own goals.

In order to celebrate the momentous occasion of King Charles III Coronation, the children in school shared a picnic lunch with the children from the Infant School. We then shared collective worship and listened to the junior children explain what would happen during the Coronation service, whilst the infant children acted out the process. We had practised songs during the weeks building up to the Coronation, and both schools enjoyed singing together. What a special time!

Throughout this year, all children in Y4, Y5 and Y6 have all participated in an Explained Eucharist. Here, the children learn about the special part of a Eucharistic service where the community gathers, asks God’s forgiveness for their sins, and prays together. The children learn about how and why the bread and wine are brought to the altar and what the words of the Eucharistic Prayer mean, and everyone says the Lord’s Prayer together. The children then receive a blessing or the consecrated bread and wine if they are able.

We looked at our school value of curiosity during Science Week and enjoyed learning about reversible and irreversible changes in collective worship today. Our Prayer Councillors enjoyed looking in the Bible for passages linked to curiosity.

The Pupil Leadership Team read from the Bible as we listened to what the scripture said about the birth of Jesus.

We sang carols between the readings and listened to the school choir. We listened to music played by a talented Year 5 pupil.

Following the service, all of the children in Year 3 were presented with a Bible as a gift from our School Governors. These were blessed by Canon Janet.

Today we spoke about the importance of Remembrance and why we say thank you to those who laid their lives down for our own freedom. Our Head Boy and Head Girl visited St Laurence Church to present our wreath and read during the special service in church.

Today, Matt from Birmingham City Mission spoke to us about generosity. Our harvest collection will be donated to Birmingham City Mission and Northfield Community Partnership to support them in their charity work.

Our 12 Prayer Councillors planned, wrote and delivered our worship about our new school value for this half term: Forgiveness.

They spoke about where there are examples of forgiveness in the Bible, wrote a prayer and acted out the Parable of the Prodigal Son. They chose to sing our School Rule Song at the end of worship.

Our wonderful friends from 'Open the Book' told the parable of 'The Lost Sheep' from Matthew 18: 10-14.

We learnt that every single one of us is important to God.

We thoroughly enjoyed listening to Matt from Birmingham City Mission telling us the story of David and Goliath through his amazing artwork.

We learnt about how David demonstrated this term's school value of endurance, he listened to God and had hope.