About the Ethos Committee

The Ethos Committee is made up of children and adults who work together to promote the school values. Our committee meet each half term to discuss the school's Values and Ethos. The members attend Federation Ethos Days and explore the values of the Federation (Achieve, Aspire and Flourish) . The Ethos Committee share their experiences with the whole school during Assemblies as well as seeking ways to support our local community.

The classes have had an Ethos afternoon with the theme of 'Flourish'. The children have created these wonderful silhouettes to celebrate each individual being unique. 

This is Willowbank's food bank, available to anyone who is in need of support. Any requests will be dealt with in confidence. Please email or call Mrs Stephens cstephens@willowbanks.devon.sch.uk/ 01884 33473.

All of our donations come from the community of Cullompton or St Andrew's Church. 

Spirited Art and Poetry Competition 2021

As a whole school, we are taking part in this year's national competition run by NATRE (National Association of Teachers of RE). Each class will work in small or large groups to produce a piece of work based upon one of the five themes. Their work could be a poem, painting or even a dance piece!

The Ethos team will then judge the entries received from the classes and the 10 winners will be sent off!

For more details on the competition, please see the attached document.

We look forward to seeing what each class produce and will upload all entries to the website.

Assembly Shout Out!

A massive well done to the Ethos team who ran our whole school virtual assembly! This is no mean feat as they were all in their own classrooms using different laptops. Each member took part, speaking clearly about the Art and Poetry competition. 

Spring Term Ethos Day 2021

Due to the current climate we made the decision to hold our hub event in each our schools. The theme for the day was 'Achieve' and the whole school took part in the Ethos day. The day was a huge success and enjoyed by all the children. 

Mrs Hillson launched the day in her assembly by reading 'The Dot' by Peter H. Reynolds. You can listen to the story again by re-watching the assembly or on the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Clpw7PG7m1Q

Throughout the day, pupils joined live sessions where they learned about the theme 'Achieve' as well as taking part in a range of different activities. The activities focused on how we can make our 'mark' on the world and used dots as starting points. 

We have been overwhelmed by all the fantastic pieces of art work that was created using dots, Quiver and inspired by the artist Seurat. Below are a few examples from across the school:

Thank you!

As a result of our Toilet Twinning Day we raised £97.50 and donations are still coming in! This means we have now successfully twinned every unit's toilet block at Willowbank! We are awaiting our certificates and will upload locations as soon as possible.

Thank you to everyone who donated to this amazing charity.

World Toilet Twinning Day

Thursday 19th November 2020

Join us by wearing blue to school and donating via parent pay!

World Mental Health Day!

On Friday 9^th October the whole school joined together to wear yellow and raise awareness about mental health. All the children took part in different activities in their class bubbles. Some of the activities were provided by our fellow federation schools as part of the Autumn Term Ethos Event. We also enjoyed watching the videos provided as well. Below are the video links that you may want to re-watch at home or listen to the story again:

Mental Health Day: Intro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Y_TTr-oPnA

Mental Health Day: Outro

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xhkam9HaE8

Mrs Chapman also facilitated a fantastic whole school assembly on World Mental Health Day that the children enjoyed.

Ethos Committee 2020-21

It has been a great start to the new school year for the Ethos committee and we are delighted to have some new members to our team!

The Willowbank Ethos Team work together to promote the Ethos and school values within the school. This year all children in Year 2 and above were invited to apply for a position in writing. We were inundated with entries and its was a delight to read the different applications. Below are examples taken from some of the successful applications:

I would like to be part of the Ethos Committee because…

“…I want to help protect the environment and communities around the world…”

“…It would be an awesome learning experience…”

“…I work very nicely and listen to ideas. When I built a den in forest school, I listened to my friends and shared. It was very nice to work as a team…”

“…I would like to represent my new school and make a significant contribution to the school community…”

“…I am a dynamic, gregarious and capable individual who can offer new ideas in a courteous manner…”

“…I show all the core value and help people in need. I do this by going to Exeter every Christmas and giving the homeless some chocolates…”

“…I would love to help people to have a life like mine…”

“…I enjoy helping people, during lockdown I made cakes and cards for some people that were shielding to make them happy…”

"…to meet different people, travel to different places and make good choices…" 

This year Ethos will work slightly differently due to Covid restrictions so our hub days will look very different. However, we are continuing to raise funds for the charity Toilet Twinning as our fundraisers last year were postponed. We are also going to be focusing on mental well-being and understanding what spirituality means to us.

Upcoming Ethos Events:

World Mental Health Day (9^th October)

Toilet Twinning Fundraiser (19^th November)

The next Ethos Committee meeting will be held in November. We will be joined by our adult members as well.

2019-2020

The Ethos team went on a trip to our fellow federation school in Rockbeare where they undertook activities based upon the theme- 'Flourish'.

The children learnt about the brain and how it works. They really enjoyed the memory quiz. 

The children also learnt about the impact we have on our environment and how we can represent this through art. They will be taking their ideas from this to school council on Wednesday.

Thank you!

Ethos group wanted to say a massive thank you for all your support and donations given at the Christmas services. As a school community, we have raised £137.77 for the charity Toilet Twinning. This has meant that we have helped some of the world’s poorest people have basic essentials in life such as a toilet, clean water and hygiene education. We have now successfully twinned two of our toilet blocks.

Unit 1’s toilet twin is in Kindu, Maniema, Democratic Republic of Congo. The co-ordinates for the toilet’s location is: Latitude: 2.91877 Longitude: 25.91822

Unit 2’s toilet twin is in Mtonga Village, Salima District, Central Region, Malawi. The co-ordinates for the toilet’s location is: Latitude: 13.76667 Longitude: 34.36667

This is absolutely amazing but we are not stopping here! Please key your eyes peeled for information

Autumn Term Ethos Day

Some of our current Ethos team attended a Federation workshop at Lady Seaward’s last month. The theme of the day was ‘Aspire’. The children learnt about the need for further education in other countries and created pieces of artwork with inspiring quotes on.

The children loved their time at the workshop and came back brimming with ideas and plans of actions to further help the charity- ‘Toilet Twinning’.

As a team, they have spent several lunch times preparing their action plan for the current academic year. They have learnt more about the charity and the work it does. The Ethos team created an assembly so they could share information about ‘Toilet Twinning’ and ask the school for fundraising suggestions.

Ethos Committee Meeting

The next Ethos Committee meeting will be held on:

Date to be arranged

At: Willowbank Primary School

Time: TBC

Ethos Team 2019-2020

The Willowbank Ethos Team work together to promote the Ethos and School Values within the school. Each class within the school has chosen their Ethos Team representative. The Ethos team for 2019-2020 will take part in the Federation Ethos days and lead prayers at the special services held at St Andrew's Church in Cullompton. 

This year we are working to raise funds for our chosen charity which is Toilet Twinning. We are aiming to twin one toilet in each Unit area!

2018-2019

On Friday 5th July, Willowbank Primary School held it's first Core Values Campaign Morning. The purpose of the morning was to inform parents how we embed our Core Values into our lives at Willowbank. We discussed the value of having these core values and how we hope that by using these values everyday our children will be the best people they can be and will go on to be excellent role models. 

There was a range of activities, across the school,  focusing on each of the Core Values. Parents and family members visited their children in the classroom and the school was buzzing with a happy atmosphere  as the children thought about how they demonstrate the Core Values and then created their artwork or took part in their activity.

The activities were varied and included: Friendship Bracelets, Poetry, Back to Back drawing, Random Acts of Kindness, Sport and Posters. One of the parents wrote an acrostic poem in Dove class who were looking at Honesty.

Helping others, being

Open to other's opinions

Never telling lies,

Even when it's really hard

So

Tell the truth and

You'll get a star in the jar!

In the afternoon, children from Key Stage 2 distributed biscuits and stickers as part of their random act of kindness activity and Key Stage 1 children were seen giving out friendship bracelets to a friend or an adult to say thank you for being caring. Everyone enjoyed the morning and it is hoped that we will be able to hold more of these mornings, on different days, so that more people can join in the fun.

Here are a few of the many lovely comments we received from our visitors:

'This morning has been fantastic and clearly enjoyed by all....lovely to see the children working together'

'It has been so lovely to see so many happy faces throughout the school and to be able to participate. The option of both my children being together for the morning was brilliant.....over this past year the improvement in the school has been incredible.'

'What a fab morning. Great idea to get parents engaged in Ethos! Thank you to all involved.' 

'It was lovely to have the opportunity to be part of the children's learning and having an awareness of the school's core values. I thought the activities were well thought out being made fun for the children to take part in and learn.' 

'

Rockbeare Ethos Morning - Pentecost

Rockbeare Ethos Morning 

Rockbeare Primary School hosted an Ethos morning which four of the Ethos Committee members were able to attend with Mrs Shiach. The morning focused on the story of Noah and the children brought back artwork and their own lollipop ark that they had created as they thought about the story and what it means to children today. These are now on display to be shared with the rest of the school. 

"I really enjoyed taking part in the Ethos morning, it was difficult making the ark but we persevered, worked together as a team and we are very proud of it" - Lydia

"It was good to meet children from other schools and work in groups with them" - Theo

On Thursday 6th December four children from our Ethos Team participated in the Central Hub Ethos day at Chudleigh Knighton Primary School. They took part in a variety of activities linking to the history of St Nicholas across Europe. The children made paper lanterns, star ornaments, poinsettias and weaved stars from wool. They also enjoyed some tasty Christmas food treats from Germany. They enjoyed their time in Chudleigh Knighton and were looking forward to sharing their day with everyone back at Willowbank School. 

"I liked making new friends from different schools" - Ava

"It was interesting to learn about St Nicholas and what different countries do at this time of year." - Jonathon

"I felt proud to be representing Willowbank Primary School"  - Zach