Remembrance

On Thursday morning, the pupils and staff of St Mary’s joined together for a special Collective Worship to mark Remembrance Day. Each class shared work that they had been producing leading up to this in-school service, focused around the themes of Respect, Sacrifice, Reflection and Remembrance. Photos of these can be found later on in this newsletter.

At 11am the bells rang and everyone throughout the school fell silent for two minutes to remember all of those men and women who have given so much since the concept of Remembrance Day was introduced following The Great War (World War 1).

A short time later Mrs Dickinson (one of our School Governors) and I accompanied the School Council and Worship Council up to the War Memorial at the far end of the high street. Whilst we were there Daisy and Jack (from our School Council) shared two verses from Rupert Brooke’s The Soldier. Everyone joined in with a Remembrance Prayer—where all the children joined in with ‘We will remember them’ and finished our visit with some facts about what memorials tell us, Mrs Dickinson even told the children about the meaning of the white poppy.

The adults accompanying the children were very impressed with how beautifully and sensibly the children walked through the town and how respectfully and maturely they joined in with the mini service when we arrived at the memorial and how polite they were to members of the public who made some positive comments about the children. I was also very touched with how well they read their poems and prayers and how well the older pupils looked after the younger pupil when we were walking backwards and forwards to the memorial; and also whilst they were there.

Every pupil was a credit to our school.