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Spiritual
Life of our school |
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Judaism
Assembly Linda Mort very kindly visited our school on Thursday 12 November. At a whole school assembly, she shared with the children the importance of her own faith, through some of the symbols of her faith. She shared with us bible stories and talked about the Ten Commandments given to Moses, explaining that bible stories are important and that within the Jewish faith they are read in Hebrew from the Torah. |
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She
also talked about the importance of the Sabbath and how it is celebrated
on Saturday by visiting the synagogue - we celebrate on Sunday by visiting
Church. As in our faith, festivals are celebrated to mark significant
events in the liturgical year:The Jewish faith are looking forward to
celebrating the Festival of light - Hannukah, during which a candle
will be placed and lit on the menorah. The children and staff acknowledge that they were very fortunate to have this opportunity to share faith experience and extend a sincere word of thanks to Linda. |
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Year
6 Retreat -
on 2 November 2009 our Year 6 children, accompanied by Miss Gould and
Mrs Gavin, attended a special Day Retreat at The Marist Centre in Chorlton.
Sister Anne and Sister Helen took the children through a wonderful series
of activities and quiet reflection - ensuring that they obtained a deeper
understanding of their individual gifts and talents. They all left feeling inspired and uplifted, with knowledge of goals to achieve during the school year as well as in life. |
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Ramadan One of our Year 6 children, Mujtaba, kindly gave a talk to all the classes on the significance of prayer to him and what Ramadan means to him as a young Muslim boy. He also presented an informative powerpoint slideshow and brought in various artefacts including a prayer mat. |
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ST
MARGARET WARD CAFOD GROUP Our Cafod Group says SAVE OUR PLANET as they proudly hold up our hand banner made by our Year 4 children.The members of our group are Sophie, Sana, Colm and Leo. |
| CAFOD
- On Friday 16 October 2009, Cafod Representative
Anne Wilson visited our school to talk to both Key Stage 1 and Key Stage
2 children about climate change and how this is affecting our planet.She
explained how Cafod help in countries like Brazil who are being particularly
affected by the depletion of resources such as the Rain Forest and showed
the children a slideshow. She also spoke about how the children can become
involved in the Cafod campaign to address Gordon Brown to make him aware
that we need to protect our natural resources for future generations. We have all agreed to complete a hand banner and this will be taken by Anne and other Cafod members to Downing Street in December. |
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The Rosary - During the month of October and in line with the liturgical year, we have made the rosary a prime focus point both in class lessons and whole school assemblies. |  |
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Sacramental
Programme 2010 |
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2009-10
First Communion Group children |
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Childrens
Liturgy Group
at St Margaret Ward Each week at our 6.30pm Saturday Vigil Mass, Debbie Walsh organises and runs a 'Little Church' for children of all ages to take part in a Childrens Liturgy. They read the Gospel together and then join in a fun activity relevant to the Gospel message. All children are most welcome and we'd love to have more children and their families come to Saturday Evening Mass so please come along! |
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Shoes
For Africa In conjunction with National Schools Partnership, during October 2009, 211 pairs of shoes were collected here at St Margaret Ward to be distributed to children in South Africa. With the 2010 World Cup in South Africa in mind, the focus was on collecting sports shoes. This was another opportunity for the children at St Margaret Ward to think of the needs of others. |
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Harvest
Festival-on 23 October 2009, we celebrated
our Harvest Festival with a whole school assembly and each class contributed
with readings,art work, songs and prayers on the theme of thanksgiving.We
also took time to reflect on Cafod Harvest Family Fast Day and the significance
the money we raised would have.We are constantly
reminded of how fortunate we are and we took this opportunity to remember
those less fortunate than ourselves - we had a collection of tinned
or packet food for the homeless which the children presented during
the assembly and their donations were then taken to the Cornerstone
Centre for the homeless.
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Feast of St Margaret Ward
is celebrated on 30th August but as this is during our
summer break, we feel it is very important to mark the occasion in a special
way and this year our celebration took place on 8 September 2009. Our Patron Saint's Day was celebrated with a special, annual, whole school mass and this year, each class wrote their own Class Prayer which was presented in the offertory. |
| Our 2009 St Margaret Ward Day celebration was also marked with two specially decorated cakes which were distributed to each class and thoroughly enjoyed by all the children and staff. |  |
| First Holy Communion
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| Crowning
of Our Lady's Statue- May is traditionally
the month when we especially pray to and honour Our Lady and so we held
a special assembly to celebrate together as a school family. Each child was asked to bring a flower which they carried in procession and as the children sang hymns, our school statue of Our Lady was crowned with flowers. |
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Easter
Production- our children
celebrated Easter 2009 with a powerful and emotional depiction of the
Stations of the Cross with children from both Key Stage One and Two
narrating and acting the events at each Station. The actors were outstanding and the music and backdrop of the beautiful chapel helped to create a moving, piognant occasion. Many parents and family members joined us in our Holy Week reflections and their support is greatly appreciated. Easter play |
| Easter 2009 All classes took the opportunity to visit the chapel to reflect upon the Stations of the Cross, this provided the theme for our Easter production, planned and organised by Mrs Fagan.Throughout Lent we raised money for Cafod and The Good Shepherd by having a non-uniform day, a design an egg competition and an Easter egg raffle(the eggs were donated by members of staff) and we raised £100. |
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| CAFOD - During October 2008, Cafod Representative Anne Wilson visited our school to talk to the children about Family Fast Day and presented two assemblies on how Cafod use all the money that is raised on these special days. During the KS2 assembly, the children heard how Cafod have improved the life of a little girl called Celia, her family and her village. | |
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| CAFOD - We were delighted to welcome back Anne Wilson who came into school to talk to the children about water usage in developing countries.This was particularly relevant to us as one of the items we purchased from World Gifts was a water pump.She informed us about how precious this resource is especially if you have to walk miles to collect clean water.She also reminded us that we can be more resourceful and not waste water, for example turning off the tap when we clean our teeth. |
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'Outstanding'RE
Inspection- Our
entire St Margaret Ward community was delighted to be judged as ‘Outstanding
in all areas’ in the Section 48 RE Inspection which took place
in January 2008. “A very happy and secure environment has been created within which the children are encouraged and have the confidence to express their feelings and views". “The children are entrusted with many real responsibilities – school council, Fair Trade, Heart of Gold Awards, Head Boy and Girl - and the children respond by taking their responsibilities seriously and appear to have a great amount of fun and enjoyment in carrying them out.” |
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World Gifts - During Advent we had a non
uniform day throughout school and raised £108. The children in our Fair Trade and Cafod group met to share ideas on how to spend the money and spoke with the children in all classes before deciding on the purchase of a Water Pump, Piglets and a bicycle. |
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Family Tree -
As highlighted in our School Mission Statement, we place great importance
on how we show by word and example that the school is an enlarged family
in which individuals are special. Each leaf on our Family Tree mural in the entrance hall has a photo of one of our children, with their own chosen talent written in gold, showing that each member of our school family is valued for their unique contribution and special talents. |
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| Fair Trade- We are constantly encouraging our childen to think about wider world issues and are pleased to say we have an active number of Year 4, 5 and 6 children involved in our Fair Trade group. They take responsibility for ordering and selling stock from the Traidcraft catalogue and often sell cards and gifts at Curriculum and Parents evenings. |  |
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Margaret Ward - Our Patron Saint Margaret Ward was born in Congleton,Cheshire. While working in London she heard that a priest was imprisoned and by making friends with the gaoler's wife, she visited Father Watson and brought him food.Eventually she smuggled in a rope and persuaded an Irish boatman, John Roche, to be ready to take the priest accross the River Thames. Although the priest escaped, the rope was accidentally left behind and traced to Margaret. She was imprisoned,questioned and tortured and offered her freedom if she would surrender Father Watson and convert to the Church of England.She declined saying she was ready to lay down her life for conscience and loyalty to God and her Religion. She was condemned to death for felony and sent to Tyburn on 30th August 1588 for execution by hanging. She is one of the Forty Martyrs of England and Wales. She was beatified in 1929 and canonised in 1970. |
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