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Year 2 Class Assembly: The Importance of Being Truthful

Year 2 entertainingly performed two Bible stories, The Golden Calf and Zacchaeus the Tax Collector, to illustrate the importance of always telling the truth, their Habit of the Week.

In the first story, Theodore, Rapha and Lucas took the parts of Moses, his brother Aaron and God, while the rest of the class played the Israelites waiting with Aaron in the camp for Moses to return from speaking with God. Frustrated with waiting (‘perhaps they needed to learn our Whole School Habit of being patient!’) Aaron tells the Israelites to bring him all their gold jewellery, which he melts down and forms into a Golden Calf. The pupils showed how the Israelites bowed down and worshipped this idol, angering God and Moses. In a helpful “freeze frame” Year 2 acted out what should have happened: Aaron telling the truth and saying sorry. Then they acted out what actually happened: Aaron denied making the idol (which was met with big gasps from the Israelites). Though God forgave him, the consequence for Aaron was that he was never trusted to lead the camp again.

The class had also thought about the sorts of lies, like exaggerating: ‘I never get to…’, ‘You always get to…’, and truths: ‘I broke a train track and admitted to it’, that children might tell in school. In class they had made posters of some examples they had seen, which they held up at the front as they explained.

To finish, Samson and Isaac took the parts of Zacchaeus and Jesus and acted out the story of the dishonest tax collector who learned the importance of telling the truth and changed his ways after spending time with Jesus.

Thank you Year 2 for an amusing and thought-provoking Class Assembly on being truthful!

A Toast to Burns Night with the HCA

Heritage families gathered last Saturday for an unforgettable evening of Scottish tradition at the very first HCA Burns Night Celebration. With the stirring sound of James Orr’s bagpipes setting the scene, guests enjoyed a lively ceilidh led by The Cyriacs Ceilidh Band, a classic Burns poetry recitation, and, of course, a whisky toast. From energetic dancing to shared laughter across generations, the night was a wonderful celebration of culture and community, bringing people together in true Heritage spirit.

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Year 5 Class Assembly: Push, Pull, Twist – Forces & their Effects

In Year 5’s interactive Class Assembly this term, they shared the amazing things they have been learning in Science about Forces. The Infants and Juniors listened carefully, thanks in part to a gentle warning at the start that there would be a quiz at the end! Year 5 pupils held up cards that identified the three types of force – Push, Pull and Twist and suggested that doors and locks are a good example of where we find these forces at work in everyday life. The children were then asked to put their hands up with any of their own examples of these forces.

After an engaging introduction, pupils took it in turn to share what they had learned about the effects of some of these forces, such as Friction, a resistive force that acts like a push force on moving objects. The children were encouraged to experience one of the effects of friction for themselves, by looking at the uneven texture of their palms then rubbing them together to feel the heat this generates. They held up a picture of a racing car whose brakes were red hot from the brake discs slowing the vehicle down, another effect of Friction.

Year 5 explained more about Air Resistance. Pupils showed how, in a lesson in the playground, they had tried to run with a large piece of cardboard in front of them and felt how the air resistance slowed them down. They also had conducted an experiment with different shaped handmade parachutes, to work out which shape caused the most and least air resistance: a hexagon, square and circle fell at similar speeds but the rectangle always fell fastest.

The final force the class told about was Buoyant Force, which acts on any object that enters water. To demonstrate this, pupils held up a line of wool to represent the water surface line and used light and heavy balls to illustrate how, for heavier objects, the downward pull of gravity is much bigger than the buoyant force pushing against it and the opposite is true for lighter objects, like a beachball, which causes it to float.

As promised, the Infants and Juniors enjoyed a short quiz at the end of the assembly, showing all that they had learned. Proving his own habit of attentive listening, Mr Fletcher added a quick summary, with an affirmative nod from the Year 5 teacher Mr Dalton to confirm that the knowledge had successfully ‘stuck’.

Well done to Year 5 for a thoroughly absorbing and informative Class Assembly!

Cold Crematorium: Commemorating Holocaust Memorial Day

In a sobering Assembly, through the recently translated story of a Hungarian Jewish poet and journalist, History teacher Mr Wayman warned Senior pupils of how essential it is that we remember the events of the Holocaust.

Josef Debreczeni was a Hungarian Jew, the editor of Hungary’s daily newspaper, then of an illustrated weekly, before anti-Jewish laws cost him his job in 1938. The Nazis occupied Hungary in March 1944, and two months later he was deported by cattle truck to Auschwitz-Birkenau, along with his mother, father and wife. Debreczeni alone survived the war and later documented his experiences at Auschwitz. Cold Crematorium, his eyewitness account, was published in Hungarian in 1950, but only translated into English over seventy years later, being published just two weeks ago.

Before re-telling parts of Debreczeni’s account, Mr Wayman drew pupils’ attention to the shocking words, this Holocaust Memorial Day, of Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis:

‘1/5 of people interviewed in a recent survey by the Anti-defamation League had not even heard of the Holocaust. 1/5 believed it was a myth or exaggerated. Fewer than half believed it happened as historians have recorded. The Hebrew word Zakar – to remember – is not passive. It implies action. Our societies are called upon to recall the horrors of the past to ensure that in the future we will protect the vulnerable and confront evil whenever it arises.’

To this end, Mr Wayman recounted parts of the book that had particularly struck him. In one camp, Debreczeni’s job is to help build tunnels; he highlights how commonplace death became, ‘Rockfalls are frequent, and rare is the day that does not see one or two crushed-to-death… Such images are to be expected. Neither slave drivers nor slaves so much as glance at the corpses.’ (p.121)

In another interesting insight, Mr Wayman highlighted how the Nazis used hierarchies to divert prisoners’ anger away from those truly in power at Auschwitz and towards their fellow prisoners: Jews who had been appointed as ‘Kapos’ (block or camp elders) who dealt out punishments. Mr Wayman read aloud one example of this, a prisoner forced to crouch down and receive fifty lashes: ‘the [Kapo] puts his all into the blows – even more so because if the camp gods suspect shenanigans it often happens that the blows continue on the head of the one meting out the sentence.’ (p.67)

The book’s title takes its name from a description of the “medical camp” where Debreczeni is sent in the last months before he’s finally liberated, a place no less grim than any of the other camps, and whose real purpose he suspects is to deliberately infect and kill the prisoners through the spreading of typhus. He catches the disease and barely escapes with his life.

In Cold Crematorium, Debreczeni quotes the words of a Parisian Jew who he meets when he first arrives in Auschwitz:

‘If one day someone writes about what is happening…they’ll be seen as either crazy or a perverse liar.’ (p.51)

With this prescient quote Mr Wayman finished the assembly, cautioning the pupils against being part of the awful stats, cautioning them against forgetting or disbelieving this unimaginable but true history.

In a wonderfully evocative written piece, Edward describes his encounter with a lunar rainbow, giving fascinating insight into this unusual natural phenomenon.

Heritage Nature Enthusiast’s Article Published in The Guardian’s Young Country Diary

Congratulations to Edward (Y9) who submitted an article to The Guardian’s Young Country Diary series, which was published in the newspaper and online this weekend! In a wonderfully evocative written piece, Edward describes his encounter with a lunar rainbow while in Yorkshire over Christmas, giving fascinating insight into this unusual natural phenomenon.

Edward writes: ‘There was something marvellous about witnessing an event so beautiful and rare by pure chance, making me think there must be so much beauty in our delicate planet that no one has ever seen.’

Articles featured in the series are all about a recent encounter with nature. Entries are open to children aged between 8 – 14 who are based in the UK, from which six winning articles are chosen for each season. Edward’s entry is featured as part of this year’s winter series.

Perhaps your child has been inspired to write about their own encounter with nature; if so, submissions to the Young Country Diary for spring pieces will open on Saturday 1st March.

You can read the full piece on The Guardian website here.