Joy

Joy

Our Christian value of JOY is an intrinsic part of all aspects of school life for staff and children alike. At Selwood we seek to provide children with high quality education rooted in Christianity that will support them throughout their lives enabling them to ‘Live Life in all its fullness’ John 10:10.
Each core Christian value is represented to the children in a range of ways e.g. a dictionary definition, the reason why we have chosen that value, which bible story it links to, children’s voice showing what that value means to them and through art work.

Joy is defined as a great sense of happiness and pleasure. Jesus said 'Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.'

Our behaviour system of rewarding positive behaviour with achievement points is linked to the 4 core Christian values.  Reasons why pupils can earn achievement points are outlined in the table below.  

 

Wisdom	Community	Joy	Hope
Problem solving	Taking part with a positive attitude	Enthusiasm	Ambition
Questioning	Politeness	Resilience	Optimism
Seeking help	Empathy	Self-Belief	Positivity
Listening	Respect for others	Creativity	Risk Taking
Leadership	Supporting others	Pride in achievement/work	Learning from failure and completing tasks.
Self Control	Praising others	Love of learning	Independent work

 

We use the bible story ‘The Miraculous catch of fish’ (Luke 5:1-11) from the New Testament to demonstrate how we can feel great joy when we are thankful for positive events in our life. When we work hard and are good people we will receive rewards in life, when we are thankful for these rewards and share them we will continue to receive rewards.

One day, as the crowds were pressing close to him to hear the word of God, Jesus was standing by the lake of Gennesaret. He saw two boats moored by the land; the fishermen had gone ashore and were washing their nets. He got into one of the boats – it was Simon’s – and asked him to put out a little way from the land. Then he sat down in the boat and began to teach the crowd. When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon, ‘Put out into the deeper part, and let down your nets for a catch.’ ‘Master,’ replied Simon, ‘we were working hard all night and caught nothing at all. But if you say so, I’ll let down the nets.’ When they did so, they caught such a huge number of fish that their nets began to break. They signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them. So they came, and filled both the boats, and they began to sink. When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees. He and all his companions were gripped with amazement at the catch of fish they had taken; this included James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were partners with Simon. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ said Jesus to Simon. ‘From now on you’ll be catching people.’ They brought the boats in to land. Then they abandoned everything and followed him.

 

Here is a prayer written by our pupils on our core Christian value; Joy.

Dear God,

Let us have joy today

Joy is like the sun it will make you happy and you will succeed

Please give us joy in our hearts so we can pass on this joy to everyone we meet each day.

Please give us only joy, not sadness or jealousy. We do not have time to dwell in sadness or angriness.

Amen