This week we celebrated our third year of Mission Week at CTK! This is a full week dedicated to learning more about our mission set for us by God as Christians, as well and learning how to fulfil our school mission of worshipping, learning and playing together in the love of Jesus, helping one another to develop the talents given to us by God.
Mrs Carter started the week with an assembly all about the patron saint of our school’s trust: St Thomas Aquinas. Mrs Carter told us his nickname, which is the Angelic Doctor. He is called this because he is angelic like the angels because he loved God so much, and he is a doctor because he has studied so much about our faith and has helped us get better at knowing God. He is the doctor of the Catholic Church.
Mrs Carter told us that St Thomas Aquinas teaches us about how to live a good life – these are called virtues. We learnt that virtues are good habits. We do lots of good habits already at CTK: meet and greet, show an attitude of gratitude, praying, just to name a few! Some of the children spoke about habits being something that you do naturally because you practise them. Koen (yr6) spoke about doing keepy-uppies; at first, they were hard to do, but he kept practising and now he does them so naturally, they have become a habit that is easy for him to do! Mrs Carter told us this is the same with the virtues that St Thomas Aquinas taught us about: we must keep practising them until they become good habits.
The virtues we should try to practise in our lives are:
Prudence (being wise; making the right decision for the right reason)
Justice (being fair)
Fortitude (having courage in difficult times)
Temperance (having self-control)
Mrs Carter taught us a saying to help us remember this: Praying Just Feels Terrific! Each word starts with the same letter as one of the virtues so that we remember them.
St Thomas Aquinas teaches us that if we practise these cardinal virtues, we will receive three other (theological) virtues as gifts from God: Faith, Hope and Charity. These gifts are having belief in God, having trust in God’s promise of eternal life in Heaven, and showing love to our neighbours and to God.
Our mission was to learn about these virtues in our classes this week and spot them around our school: people live them out all the time! Mrs Carter also set us a quiz to complete at the end of the week to see how much we have learnt about virtues!
In our classes, we have been learning about good habits being virtues, and how that, if we practise our Gospel values Jesus taught us, they become virtues because they are good habits too.
EYFS have been learning about the virtue of meeting and greeting people, which is living out our school mission statement.
Year 1 and Year 2 have been learning the difference between what is a good habit and what is a bad habit. They have learnt that practising good habits makes them virtues.
Year 3 and Year 4 have started to name these virtues and practise real-life examples of these through role play.
Year 5 and Year 6 have been looking at these virtues in more detail and thinking about some of our most beloved saints and which virtues they demonstrated in their lives.
We have all finished mission week with an act of worship focused around fulfilling our mission as Christian through living out our Gospel Values and Catholic Virtues.
Braydon (Year 5) – St Joseph was prudent because he made a wise decision to stay married to Mary when she was pregnant with baby Jesus.
Stephy (Year 5) – I realised that the three gifts from God (faith, hope, charity) are what we pray for when we pray the Rosary and hold the first three beads on the Rosary.
Dhana (Year 6) – St Maximillian Kolbe demonstrated justice, fortitude and prudence when he sacrificed his life for another prisoner in a concentration camp. He also showed faith, hope and love (charity) because he trusted in God and had hope that he would meet Jesus in Heaven when he died. He showed love to his neighbour by giving up his life for them. This is why he is a martyr.
4 comments
6EG loved Mission Week!
Toby said it has reminded him of how lucky we are at Christ the King in our opportunities and that we should pray for others who perhaps don’t have the same opportunities.
Freya said that the virtue of Prudence stood out to her. It made her recognise the need to make the right decisions, both at school and at home. She brought in a large donation for our Harvest Liturgy as she felt this was the right thing to do.
Oscar has been inspired by St. Thomas Aquinas because he taught us the different virtues. Oscar has said that he will continue to practise the four different Cardinal Virtues throughout Year 6 in the hope that he will receive the three Theological Virtues from God.
6EG have pledged to practise the virtue of temperance by deciding not to waste food, by taking only what we need and thinking about those less fortunate than us. We have pledged this because we should strive to live in the likeness of God.
3TP really enjoyed mission week because we learnt lots!
Santi said we learned about the virtue of temperance and celebrated a liturgy all about this.
Lacey-Rey said mission week was all about virtues and vices. This teaches us how we should act.
Selena said I learnt about 4 cardinal virtues that will help me to be a better person.
6DM loved mission week!
“Mission week made me feel happy and prayerful because I was happy to be doing it and I could spend extra time in prayer to God. I also loved talking about the saints and learning about new virtues.”
“Mission week made me think about God because God does wonderful thinks for us. If we practise the four cardinal virtues every day, we will receive the three theological virtues: faith, hope and charity.”
“As a result of mission week, I am going to always practise the cardinal virtues: prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance.”
6KT
Keisha: I have enjoyed mission week a lot. We have learned about all the different virtues and what they mean . P for Prudence , J for Justice , F for Fortitude and T for Temperance . We also did a double page spread all about the virtues for mission week. If we practise these cardinal virtues, we receive 3 more gifts: Hope, Faith and Charity. One saint that showed some of these virtues are St Tarticus who showed charity, Justice , prudence and faith. He did this because he was entrusted by bringing the Eucharist to condemned Christians in prison.
Adam: I enjoyed mission week because we learnt all about the cardinal virtues, we remember each virtue by using a phrase: Praying (prudence) Just (justice) Feels (fortitude) Terrific (temperance). We learnt about the Saints who followed these virtues which was helpful when we made double page spreads! The double page spreads were very fun to make, we got really creative and used different things life flaps!
Thank you Miss Dodd and Mrs Carter for Mission Week and helping us to become more virtuous children so we can become successful learners at CTK and better people.