Equipment: PowerPoint (Click to Download), Blink-182 – Stockholm Syndrome into audio with text (click for YouTube Link), Church of England ‘Remembrance’ video (Click for YouTube Link)

Opening: Introduce yourself, what you do etc.

Explain: Explain that this morning in assembly we’re thinking about remembering and we’re going to start off with a quick game to see how good people’s memories are.

Game: On the screen show a series of items and encourage people to look at them and try and remember all the objects. (This is similar to the classic items on a tray memory game but works for a whole school hall to join in with…we’ve included this game on the powerpoint at the top of this assembly plan)

Then show a slide with one missing and ask which is missing.

Continue this for a few rounds, maybe even jumble up the images to make it tricker

(Answers: Straw, Photograph, CD, Poppy)

Explain: Memories are really important because they remind us of good times that we’ve had (such as the photo on the powerpoint), they might remind us of mistakes we’ve made and learnt from or they might remind us of really important things that have happened in the past.

This last week in particular, lots of you will have been thinking about remembering those who have gone off to wars to fight and not returned and I want to play you a quick reading of a letter.

I am a big music fan and one of my favourite bands are a band some of you may have heard of called Blink-182. The letter you’re going to hear is taken from one of their albums and serves as an introduction to one of their songs but it’s actually a real letter.

The letter was written by Mark Hoppus, the bassists Grandad to his Grandmother during World War 2.

Play: Prologue from ‘Stockholm Syndrome’ by Blink-182 (off their self-titled album)

Explain: When we think about remembering people who’ve gone off to war unless we have relatives and stories passed down through our families we often don’t think about the sacrifice individuals made to work towards peace by going off to war.

People who left their loved ones.

Left their Mums or Dads

Left their Husbands or Wives

Left their Brothers or Sisters

To go off to the unknown, not knowing if they’d return or not but doing that so future generations like us could live in a peaceful country and that’s a huge thing for someone to do and as we remembered last week many didn’t return.

And peace is really important…Jesus said “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God’ (Matthew 5:9)

So to finish assembly I want to show you a short reading of the poem ‘For the Fallen’ which has been put together by the Church of England and we’ll just have a few moments of silence after it for you to reflect on the words,

Thank you for listening to me this morning

Video: Remembering (Church of England)