This morning, at 9.30am, St Mary’s hosted our annual Remembrance Service in St Mary’s Church. I started the service off by talking to all of the children about the origins of Remembrance Day—which started back in 1919—a year after the Great War had ended, and we also talked about the reasons why we mark this special day in this country each year. We also discussed what remembrance means and how this links to our everyday lives. Then, class by class, pupils shared a wide variety of special art work, poems and prayers around the theme of Remembrance. You could tell that the children were very proud of their efforts!

A number of children from Year 6 read each of the verses from Laurence Binyon’s famous war poem For The Fallen; Reverend Jeremy Trew shared a memory of a great uncle who had served in the Great War, had survived, but had been sadly impacted by what he had experienced in the Battle of the Somme.

Towards the end, some members of the School Council and Worship Council read some prayers, written in school and then we took part in a one-minute silence so that we could reflect on what we had learnt during the school week and also during this service. The children were engaged and respectful throughout and a number of our visitors remarked upon how well behaved all of the children were.

After another minute silence held at 11am in each classroom, I then accompanied the members of the School Council and Worship Council up to the memorial in Saffron Walden, along with Mr John Westnedge (our Chair of Governors) and Jo Crocker (our Welfare and Support Officer). At the memorial we talked about the history behind these memorials and monuments and what they tell us about our past and the children asked and answered a wide number of questions—as ever they really did the school proud. We finished off by reading a shared prayer altogether which was very poignant.