Year 2 Assembly Script

Year 2 Assembly Script

Liam / Hello and welcome to Year 2’s class assembly.
Angelo / In our Humanities lessons we have been learning about important women.
Ludo / Who have shown incredible determination and dedication to make amazing achievements.
Sophia / They certainly made us feel very proud when we were learning about them.
Proud M People
Abigail / Inspirational!
Romilly / Amazing!
Olympia / Extraordinary!
Isabella / Real!
Abigail / Er, don’t you mean, unreal!
Romilly / No, I mean, real! Like the women whose lives we are going to be looking at today. They were real people. Not some superheroes dreamt up to take part in an action movie!
Kitty / But no less
Olympia / Inspirational
Isabella / Amazing
Christian / And
Abigail / Extraordinary
Romilly / For being
Olympia / Real!
Ludo / OK, so I think we get the picture! The women you are going to meet today made an outstanding contribution to ….
(Enter Journalist)
Columba / Wait a minute! Wait a minute! First things first! Who were these people?
Ernie / If they’re famous, we need to get the first scoop!
Sophia / (Irritably) First scoop? What do you mean?
Columba / (Sighing) OK. Let’s put this simply. We’re in the business of getting a good story – for our newspaper!
Ernie / That’s what we get paid to do! So if you’ve got any celebs here today, we want to meet them!
(Enter Florence Nightingale)
Columba / Aha! And you are?
Ernie / You look like you’ve walked out of the Victorian era! Do you have a time machine?
Agnes / Why I am Florence Nightingale – the Lady of the Lamp of course!
(Journalist 1 scribbles notes onto notepad, in between taking photos)
(Journalist 2 looks up from notes, and then looks all around)
Columba / And the other celebs? Where are they?
Ernie / You did say ‘women’ I seem to remember?
(Enter Mary Seacole)
Bella / That would be me, Mary Seacole. I nursed the soldiers of the Crimean War.
(Enter Edith Cavell)
Raphaela / And I, Edith Cavell, helped the soldiers in the First World War.
(Journalist continues to scribble down every piece of information he’s given)
Columba / (Turning to Florence) OK. And what did you do?
Agnes / I nursed soldiers in the Crimean War, just like Mary Seacole.
Ernie / (Glaring at Narrator) Now wait a minute! I thought you said we had some celebs here today! Since when did just nurses qualify as celebs?
Kitty / (Impatiently) But they weren’t just nurses as you so charmingly put it!
Columba / So what were they, then? Hey! We need a bit more than this to make front page news!
Christian / Well, Edith Cavell was perhaps the most famous British female casualty of the First World War!
Ernie / (Scribbling) Whoa! Now you’re talking!
Ludo / And Florence Nightingale – well, who hasn’t heard about her work both in the Crimea and at home?
Columba / Hmm. A bit more detail please?
Sophia / OK. So she transformed the nursing profession in England, as did Edith in Belgium.
Ernie / Where were these women from?
Edith / I was born in Norfolk!
Agnes / Whereas I was born in Florence, Italy! But my parents returned to England shortly afterwards.
Columba / (To Mary) And you?
Bella / I was born in Jamaica and
Ernie / (Looking at watch). Sorry. I have to hurry you a bit!
Ernie / (To Edith) Back to you Madam. A ‘casualty’, eh? How come?
Edith / Oh, I died at the age of 49, serving my country.
Columba / (To Florence) What did you do?
Agnes / I lived to be 90 years old but I dedicated the rest of my life to looking after others.
Kitty / Yes. The first woman ever to be awarded the Order of Merit; and Mary, was awarded the Jamaican Order of Merit.
(To Journalist) Now. Is that enough?
Columba / (Closing notebook) Absolutely! Wow! (To Edith, Florence and Mary) Sorry to have to rush off but we have a story to write - well, actually three stories to write !
Ernie / Thank you so much! (Exit Journalist)
Christian / Thank goodness for that! I’m afraid that’s what happens when you become famous!
Agnes / But he didn’t ask us anything important.
Edith / No. He didn’t. What about those two terrible wars?
Bella / And, what about the terrible conditions?
Edith / What about where the wars actually took place?
Ludo / You’re right. Let’s get a bit more useful information that isn’t just about grabbing headlines! Let’s start with the Crimean War.
Enter Soldiers 1 - 3)
Alex / Us Brits, along with the French, were helping
Nakai / Turkey fight Russia
Joe / In the Crimean War fought between 1853 and 1856.
Isabella / That was during Queen Victoria’s reign
Abigail / Which lasted from 1837 to 1901.
Sophia / And can someone show us where this war took place? I’m not sure many of us know where the Crimea is.
(Enter Child holding globe or chart of the world)
(Pointing to Crimea) This is where the war took place, in the southern part of Russia.
Kitty / Wow! That’s a long way away!
Agnes / It certainly was! Just think how scary such a journey would have been for my nurses!
Bella / Yes, people certainly didn’t travel then like you do today! I travelled there by boat.
Romilly / No EasyJet or Ryan Air around in those days!
Agnes / The journey took days. My nurses and I travelled there by horse and carriage apart from a small boat journey over the English Channel.
Olympia / No comfortable ferries in those days!
Bella / We risked our lives just getting there, let alone working on the battlefields!
Christian / Exhausting! Please do all take a seat for a moment!
(Exit everyone except Narrator)
So let’s now turn our attention to the First World War.
(Enter Soldiers 4 and 5)
Jack / 1914 to 1918
Taf / Fought between The Central Powers
Sonny / And the Allied Powers.
Jack / Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire
Taf / Versus France and Russia to start with, and then lots of other countries including Britain.
Ludo / I think we need to look at the world again!
(Exit Soldier 4 & 5)
(Enter Child and with world globe/chart)
Isabella / (Pointing) So these were some of the countries involved.
Raphaela / And this (pointing to Belgium) was where I tried to free those who were stuck in enemy territory.
(Exit Child 8 & 9)
Sophia / (Spluttering) But, but … surely that was putting your own life at tremendous risk?
Raphaela / Well, of course. But sometimes you have to think of a bigger cause than just yourself.
Kitty / Back in Florence and Mary’s day and even during WW1 when Edith went to war women weren’t expected to go to the battlefield. I wonder what their parents thought about it.
(Enter Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole and Mr. Nightingale)
Kyle / (Calling) Florence? Florence? You’re not out mixing with the ‘hoi polloi’ again, are you?
Christian / (Puzzled) Hoi polloi?
Bella / He means the great unwashed
Raphaela / The rabble
Agnes / The riffraff
Kyle / (Indignantly) Now, girls! You know very well what I mean. And as for you, Florence, she came from a highly respectable family.
Agnes / And you did everything you could to persuade me not to go into nursing – I know, father!
Kyle / But to no avail! Stubborn child!
(Exit Mr. Nightingale)
(Enter Sidney Herbert)
Oliver / And just as well for us that you were so stubborn!
Ludo / And you are, sir?
Oliver / Sidney Herbert, Secretary of State for War. At your service, sir!
Bella / (Huffing) Hrmph! A pity you weren’t quite as keen to take on my services, sir! When I was trying to do my bit, in the Crimean War, I got no help (glaring at Sidney Herbert) at all!
Sophia / (To Florence) And you? Were you supported?
Agnes / Well, yes. I was actually asked to take a group of nurses out to the Crimea.
Bella / And given all the help you needed. I had to do it all myself!
Daisy / Florence wrote to us to tell us about what it was like in the hospital when she arrived with her 38 nurses.
(Enter Nurses 1 - 4)
Daisy / (To Nurses) Let’s describe the conditions my Florence found at that hospital in Scutari.
Isla / Dirt everywhere!
Savannah / Rats!
Charlotte / No heating or furniture!
Nancy / A disgusting smell
Daisy / (Sarcastically) Thanks to that oh so welcoming
(Enter Dr. John Hall)
Nicholas / Doctor John Hall! Please note, …. Doctor John Hall!
Kitty / (Impatiently) Yes, I think I got that the first time. A doctor. So surely you were delighted to have help from these wonderful nurses?
Nicholas / (Looking uncomfortable) Well, you see …
Daisy / (Impatiently) Bah! Don’t listen to him. He was just annoyed that a group of women were showing him how things should be run!
Isla / (Sighing) Those poor wounded soldiers!
Savannah / With not enough beds or blankets
Charlotte / Or good quality food
Nancy / To say nothing of the filthy conditions on the wards
Daisy / It was no wonder most of them died – from neglect and infection.
Isla / That is, ‘til we arrived!
Savannah / We soon made things one hundred times better!
Charlotte / Under the leadership of Miss Nightingale
Nancy / What a relief!
All four nurses / (Together, pointing at Dr. John Hall) No thanks to him!
(Exit all except Narrator)
(Enter Soldiers 6 & 7)
Alex / Although Mary was turned down by Florence and Sidney Herbert this didn’t stop her!
Princess / My Mary paid out of her own money to travel to the Crimeaon a ship stocked with medical supplies.
Nakai / When Mary arrived in the Crimea she set up the British Hotel.
Joe / It wasn’t a ‘hotel’ you’d expect to stay in on your holidays, it was where soldiers could rest and buy hot food, drinks and equipment.
Alex / That’s right, Mary used the money spent there to help treat and care for sick and wounded soldiers.
Nakai / Oh yes, Mother Seacole as we called her, rode on horseback into the battlefield
Joe / That’s right, a woman on the battlefield!
Alex / She looked after us so well, I loved the ginger Mother Seacole used to settle mystomach.
Nakai / And the aloe veragel worked wonders on my sore skin.
Princess / That’s my girl! She remembered all that I taught her when she helped me run my boarding house in Kingston.
Joe / After the Crimean War ended in, Mary returned to London with very little money and in poor health.
Alex / But we soldiers weren’t going to let her hard work go unrecognised – many of us wrote to the newspapers about all she had done for us.
Christian / What an incredible women.
Ludo / Indeed, Edith Cavell was also an incredible women who was very courageous.
Sophia / Edith’s father was a vicar and she learned from the Bible, and him, that it was important to help others.
Kitty / In 1896 Edith trained to be a nurse at the Royal London Hospital.
Christian / In 1907 Edith went to Brussels to nurse and was asked by a doctor who had been inspired by Florence Nightingale, to be in charge of training nurses at a special nursing school
Enter soldier
(Enter Edith Cavell)
Raphaela / Oh, I just did what I had to.
Jack / Which went just a little beyond the normal call of duty.
Raphaela / You mean, as nurse? Oh, I don’t think so.
Taf / (Throwing his hands up in the air) Oh, you were way more than just a nurse!
Sonny / This amazing lady not only saved lives
Jack / From both sides
Taf / As a nurse.
Sonny / But also helped some two hundred Allied soldiers escape from German-occupied Belgium.
(Exit Soldiers)
Abigail / Wow! That was one brave lady!
Raphaela / And let’s not forget the other two brave ladies you have had here today.
Romilly / Indeed. Wonderful, kind and generous Mary Seacole!
Olympia / And last but by no means least, the great Florence Nightingale
Isabella / Who did so much to relieve the suffering of the soldiers at the Crimea;
Abigail / And who did so much to improve our standards of Nursing in the UK; as Edith did in Belgium.
Ludo / Well we have certainly met some very courageous women who make us all feel very proud.
Liam / It just goes to show that we can achieve anything we put our minds to.
Angelo / With a bit of determination we really can reach for the stars!
SClub7 ‘Reach’
Kitty / 2018 sees 100 years since women won the right to vote, let us remember the remarkable work not only Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole and Edith Cavell did, but also women who are making a difference today.

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