Collective Worship and Prayer

At St Aelred’s, prayer and worship is central to the life of the school. We come together daily for collective worship as a whole school or in our classes or key stages. Sometimes this is led by grown-ups with children playing an active part but we encourage children to prepare and lead worship for one-another. In worship, we try to engage the senses as well as the mind.

Each academic year marks a new opportunity to reflect on our weekly offer of daily worship and the chance to be led by the Liturgical year. Our Chaplaincy team are very active in leading classes in changing their focal point and prayer spaces to reflect the liturgical seasons.

 

The themes for collective worship include sharing the Sunday Gospel at the start of the week, Statements to Live By, Catholic Social Teaching, School Mission or reflect and respond to events in our school community or in the wider world.  We have Mass together in school or in Church to mark key points in the school year and the Church’s year. We regularly invite parent, carers and parishioners to join us for worship. Our Choir play a big role within our school Masses and Liturgies too.

 

In 2025 we have launched a new school mission statement. Lent offered a brilliant opportunity to re-write our school prayer and we used ideas from our children in Year Four, Our Mini Vinnies, our staff and our Parish Priest. Our new school prayer is as follows:

 

 

In school we have set prayers and traditional prayers that are said. We also have learned and enjoy different styles of creative prayer too, such as litanies, the five finger prayer and circle prayers.