‘Help! It’s my turn to do an assembly’
Read this blog by Sandra Sutherland’s blog for some excellent general guidance for planning an assembly for a primary school. Sandra is on the CVE Scotland Management Committee and has been involved in education for all of her career.
Help, it’s my turn to do assembly!
This blog is for teacher colleagues in primary and special schools. (We will focus on secondary: Religious Observance (RO) /Time for Reflection (TfR) in a later blog).
Education Scotland published a paper: Religious Observance: Time for Reflection on the National Improvement Hub in January 2018. (It’s CfE Briefing Number 16). I find the CfE Briefing Papers to be concise and helpful.
Within school, we tend to refer to Religious Observance (RO) and Time for Reflection (TfR) as assembly. RO/TfR sits at the heart of school values; contributing to the community life of the school. The school chaplain can contribute hugely to the community life of the school (as do other partners). Every non-denominational school has a chaplain (3,500 in all) 1.
As class teachers, we “do assembly”. I remember preparing for assembly as a young teacher; in those days we still did “project” and my assembly theme fitted in with my class “project”. One assembly that my class led related to the child sponsorship that we undertook as a school community. Over the years some colleagues have said to me that they can find doing assembly makes them nervous; I can understand that. However, there are some fantastic resources to use (details of resources below); pupils enjoy participating in class/group events. The challenge can be finding activities/tasks for all pupils to enjoy and achieve success in doing, but that’s the challenge of being a teacher!
Types of assembly
Assemblies may be religious or not; it may be a time for the school to come together, to celebrate school life, achievement of all types. Assembly may be part of a national initiative e.g. Red Nose Day, BBC Children in Need; for many schools, these are part of the school calendar and provide a theme for assembly. The main festivals also provide a theme e.g. Christmas, Easter.
It may be that working alongside the school chaplain, that your school has or could develop an assembly calendar linked to themes. This could be very helpful for planning purposes.
Do all children and young people need to take part in RO?
We understand that some parents/carers may wish to withdraw their children from RO as is their right and each local authority will have guidance on this.
This can pose a question. How do we as professionals ensure that no children feel excluded, if they don’t attend RO? The CfE briefing mentioned above addresses this (page 3; section 4).
Useful websites and ideas
During the summer (2018), CVE posted Facebook posts on assembly
resources; one of these posts is included below.
Planning for your end of term assembly with your P7 class?
New beginnings, new adventures
Are your pupils excited, looking forward to new beginnings at secondary?
Websites
SPCK has an assembly plan featuring a clip from the “Prince of Egypt” video. https://www.assemblies.org.uk/pri/3158/a-new-adventure
You will find many more resources for assembly/Time for Reflection on the CVE website; one website that we recommend is run by Ethos Education.
https://ethoseducation.org/assemblies/
At CVE, we would be delighted to hear from you about TfR and if you have any resources to share; please do contact us.
