Values and Celebration Assemblies

Values and Celebration Assembly

We start each week at Alexandra Park with a Values Assembly. Every assembly links to our school values and our Learning Behaviours. During these assemblies, we will learn about the amazing things people have achieved. Sometimes these are famous people, like our class icons, and we have even had Olympians like Rebecca Adlington in to join us. We feel it is important for our children that we also focus on everyday people who have shown how they have Cared, Aspired and Achieved. A great example of this being Tobias Weller. Tobias has cerebral palsy and is the same age as many of our children. Despite this, he campaigned tirelessly for accessible playgrounds. 

We also look at current issues or areas we want to focus on as a school. For example, subject specific assemblies where we look at artists and authors or wellbeing, or specific themes such as anti bullying and anti-racism. 

From our research with the EEF, we know a cycle of development has a far greater impact than a one off event. We believe the same applies to maximising the impact of assemblies. Each assembly starts with a quick review of the previous assemblies. The children then have an opportunity to increase their understanding of the message in the assembly during their class forums. Each week a different class then completes our assembly book, which helps us remember and reflect on what we have done over a period of time.

At the end of the week, we have a Celebration Assembly where every teacher talks about how well their class has done that week and also announces their ‘Star of the Week’. This is a real highlight of the week for all the children and our team. It is great to hear how well the children have done; it is great to see how excited they are when they win; but what we believe highlights how fantastic and Caring our children are is the reaction of the other children when one of their classmates wins! Finally, we finish the week with the ‘Star of the Week’ having drinks and biscuits with the headteacher in our conference room.