Let Your Light Shine; on everyone, everywhere, everyday
(Matthew 5:16)
The first part of our vision is from Matthew 5:16 in the bible. “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” We feel it is vital for our children to let their lights shine in so many ways in school but also to help others’ lights shine. This is why we have included everyone, everywhere, everyday to show children how it is important to shine in many different ways.
Shining on everyone is about the ways in which we live out our school values in school and with others in our local and global communities.
Letting our light shine everywhere is about making sure we share and show our school values wherever we are, whether this is in school or outside in our local communities.
We also think it is important that children let their light shine everyday in lots of different ways, sharing good with the world.
Theological Roots
The phrase “let your light shine” comes from the Bible, specifically from the book of Matthew chapter 5 verse 16, in which Jesus says, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”
This is Jesus encouraging his followers to live in a way that is exemplary and that brings honor to God, so that others may see their good deeds and be drawn to God. In other words, they should be a good influence on others, and by doing so they will show the love and grace of God to the people around them.
In school, we have a reflection area that is linked to our image of a sun, Children are able to focus on our school value and reflect in our box. We then share these reflections in our weekly assemblies.
We currently have 12 school values in place in school. We follow these on a 2 yearly programme and look at 1 every half term as our focus for all aspects of school life
Our school values have 4 main aspects to them as can be seen from the lines in the picture below.
We focus on these as part of our collective worship in school and link this to all aspects of school life. An example of this can be seen below.
Worship Overview Example- Thankfulness Collective Worship Policy 24-27 RE Policy 2024-27We are really proud to introduce our leading lights for this year. Our leading lights will have positions of responsibility throughout the school term and will support all of the classes in many different ways whilst continuing to let their own and others lights shine. Our Leading Lights this year are Noah, Brandon, Bella, Daisy, Finlay, Eva, Albert, Elana and Hatty
All of our leading lights have now taken up different important leadership roles within our school. All of the children have helped write their job descriptions for these important jobs! Worship Leaders, Reading Buddies, RRS Ambassadors, Library Monitors, Eco Monitors and Pupil Voice
Big Questions
Over the past year we have been exploring our spirituality through the use of big questions in school. These are questions that we cannot answer yet yet or require lots of thinking and reflection. Each week we have a different question that we focus on. These are used as a focus point in collective worship and are launched every Monday by the headteacher. Children then spend time in their Friday RE sessions reflecting on these and have further discussions. Below is an example of one of our many big questions.
Spirituality
BN-Sprituality-Policy-2025-28
At Buckland Newton CE Primary School, we use our school vision to channel our spirituality by:
Looking inward to help our light shine and looking outwards to help our light shine on others and looking upwards and outwards.
We have continued to explore our spirituality through our windows, mirrors and doors approach. This has enabled us to focus all aspects of spirituality and support children to understand this and make links to all we do in school.
We have also continued to develop our school reflection areas and have these in all classes and have began to make an outside spiritual space for our children to use.
