At Wells Cathedral School and Little Wellies Nursery, we think that even with our smallest pupils, we need to remember to focus on the bigger picture.
Our school values of Creativity, Aspiration, Responsibility and Endeavour are at the heart of all that we do. These four values – which appropriately also spell the word “CARE” – inspire us as teachers to nurture and develop these qualities in our pupils, with the aim of assisting them in becoming amazing young people that leave school with huge potential for life’s successes.
Why do we put such emphasis on these values?
Simply put, it is these qualities – alongside our Learning Powers of resilience, motivation, curiosity, careful thinking and resourcefulness – that are so often the strong predictors of success in life.
These are skills that run through every year of our educational journey from Nursery all the way up to eighteen. They grow and develop, and increase in complexity and maturity as the children work their way through school and then into their adult lives.
When our children are faced with challenges or things get tough – as has been the case for so many of us in recent years – it is these qualities that will get them through.
Reach for the Stars
At our school assemblies, we delve into what these, for a little child, rather big words mean! It is our job in Pre-Prep to turn these large, somewhat generic words into things that really mean something to our children. A recent focus for us has been ‘Aspiration’. We started assembly by playing the song ‘Reach for the Stars’, and explaining to the children that this means to believe in oneself and reach high. Children need to be shown how high they can reach.
Having established this idea, we couldn’t think of any better way to show this than to let our Nursery and Pre-Prep children observe the older children in the School. We chose to focus on the performing arts, and let our children enjoy a whole host of opportunities, devised and delivered by pupils from our Junior School and Senior School.
One particularly memorable occasion was when our Senior School musicians put on an inspiring workshop, playing popular Disney songs on a whole host of instruments. This inspired the children in Pre-Prep to come back exclaiming that they want to play every instrument under the sun!
More recently, our Pre-Prep children also had the wonderful experience of watching a dress rehearsal for our Junior School production of Shrek, featuring pupils from Year 3 to Year 6. Our youngest children could not have been more inspired. They could not believe that underneath those costumes and all that make-up were some of the older children that they actually know!
These opportunities make our children feel like anything is possible if they work for it.
Our children are of course incredibly fortunate to be surrounded by such inspiring role models, and we as teachers feel just as fortunate to work with them. So while we aim to inspire them, they also amaze, delight and inspire us, creating a cycle of aspiration where we’re all helping each other achieve our own personal success. We’re all reaching for the stars together!
John Fosbrook
Director of Admissions
