SMSC is at the heart of everything we do at Herne Juniors; it encompasses personal development across the whole curriculum.
As a school, we have an annual SMSC week where we take the opportunity to focus solely on the Spiritual, Moral, Social, Cultural aspects of learning. This ties together everything we do on a day to day basis. During this week, the children learn about a global issue of poverty or injustice, then respond to it in creative ways.
This year, the children learned about the refugee crisis then took part in a range of creative activities, responding to what they had learned. They drew portraits of refugees, focusing on the fact that refugees are more than statistics; they are real people with real stories, real trauma. Another activity was to create a graphic score, which they created after listening to a piece of music composed by Raghad Haddad, a Syrian refugee. They talked about the fact that many refugees undertake very dangerous journeys when searching for safety. A third creative task was to create clothes for paper people. When making the clothes, the children talked about the fact that many refugees have very little possessions when they flee their countries. Some only have the clothes they are wearing. With Mrs Parrett, the children wrote prayers and messages of love and hope for refugees. Later in the week, the children wrote either poems or diary entries about the thoughts and feelings of refugees.
On the Friday, we held an extra Worship in the afternoon where the children reflected on what they had learnt about and created in their lessons. We were also very lucky to welcome the Bishop of Dover into school for the final worship. She was immensely impressed by what the children had learnt and by their compassionate understanding of what it must be like to be a refugee. She said that our children gave her so much hope for the future.
After school on the Friday, there was a gallery of the children's work in the hall. We were very pleased to see so many parents and carers come to admire what the children had done.