On Monday, Year 3 talked about gratitude during their class assembly — an encouraging and important message to start out the week. As a class, the children have been discussing the importance of being thankful, including when they might say thank you, who they might be thankful for, and why it is important. 

To illustrate the importance of this message, the pupils acted out the story of King Midas, one of the Greek Myths they have been learning about this term. The familiar myth tells the story of the wealth-obsessed king who ruled a great kingdom, and who mistakenly thought his happiness was dependent on the gold he had. When granted a wish by the Greek God Dionysus, the foolish Midas wished that everything he wished would be turned to gold. This gift, of course, brought many problems as everything around him turned to gold, including the very food he tried to eat and, saddest of all, his beloved daughter. Finally realising that his great gift was actually a curse, the king begged Dionysus to lift the spell and from then on ruled as a good King. The moral of the story, of course, is ‘be thankful for what you have.’

The pupils then shared drawings of some things they are thankful for, including their homes, families, and cake! The assembly ended with a lovely prayer of gratitude, and the class handed out smiley faces to each person as they left, to help them remember to be thankful. 

2022 Heritage Leaver Mara Pintece was recently recognised in this year’s Cambridge Classical Association Reading Competition, where she prepared and performed  a passage, in the original Latin, from ‘The Metamorphoses’ – a narrative poem written  by Roman poet Ovid over 2,000 years ago. Mara, who is currently studying A-Level Latin  at King’s Ely, entered the ‘Senior Verse’ category of the competition, which was held at the Cambridge University Faculty of Classics. She earned a ‘Highly Commended’ award for her performance, based on her pronunciation, scansion, and how well she performed and reflected the content of the poem.

And in another classical languages achievement, Catherine Rudge, also a 2022 Heritage Leaver, has been awarded first place in the Senior Greek Verse category of this year’s CAS Reading Competition at the University of Cambridge. Catherine is currently a Sixth Form pupil at the Leys, studying Maths, Further Maths, Physics and Greek. Mr Burden has clearly been preparing his pupils well for studying  the classics!