What does it mean to be a Muslim in Britain today?
We started the lesson by thinking about what a person might encounter throughout their life and made a list of the top five most important things that would support us through this journey. We then linked this to the five pillars of Islam as they provide structure for Islamic daily spiritual life. We discussed the five pillars of Islam in great detail and watched a clip which showed us what these were and how they affect a Muslim.
We did lots of exciting things during our final weeks of Spring 2.
We planted our own sunflower seeds and can’t wait to see how they grow! We carefully made sure that our seeds had enough compost before looking at our tiny seeds and even whispering kind things to them so that they would grow beautifully. We then made sure that they were well covered and we will keep checking in on them so that they grow into super sunflowers!
As well as planting our own seeds that will turn into flowers, we looked carefully at the different parts of flowers that had already grown. We talked about the stem, the leaves and the petals. We carefully dissected each of the parts, thinking about what they looked like, how the felt and we even smelt the petals! We then used the parts to create natural art. We also used some of the petals to add to our water tray to make beautiful potions and perfumes!
We also looked at the Easter story and talked about why Easter is important and the need for us to celebrate it many years later.
We spent some time admiring our beautiful work from this expedition that is now on display outside our classroom. We enjoyed spotting ourselves and our friends on the pictures, finding our work and talking about all the fantastic learning we have done this term!
Finally, we celebrated our fantastic Spring Term by inviting our lovely grown ups into school to our Celebration of Learning. We performed our song ‘Gingerbread Man on the Run’ before completing Easter crafts with our grown ups. We also shared our beautiful work books and talked about all of the hard work we had done this term.
A big thank you to all the grown ups who came in to share this event with the children – they have worked so hard and we are all so proud of what they have achieved!
A really busy, but really fun term! Well done Crew MW, you are all superstars!
Today in RE we explored what makes a Good Samaritan, we looked at the story from the Bible, The Good Samaritan to explore what Jesus was trying to teach Christians. We discovered that the Samaritan, regardless of his thoughts and beliefs about the Jew who needed his help showed kindness and empathy to support him. He helped the Jew travel to the inn keeper on his donkey, paid for his stay and gave him bandages and oil to treat his wounds.
In our RE lesson today we began by working in mini crews (teams) to use our bodies to create different words such as ‘love’, ‘me’ and ‘yes’. This was challenging yet fun and really got us to think about ‘what makes a good team?’. We came up with a list and some of these were communication, listening, all taking part, having a leader and being supportive. We then looked at Christianity and discussed the quote ‘Now you are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it’ taken from the Bible. We thought about why the church is considered the ‘body of Christ’ and how Christians can also demonstrate the ‘body of Christ’ individually as well as in groups. Some ideas were that the church is the central place where Christians go to worship and pray, and Christians themselves act like Jesus (caring, kind, helpful) and share Jesus’ stories with others. We then discussed the church more and listed reasons why we thought Christians might go to church on a Sunday such as, to worship, to pray, to celebrate and to take part in communion. We also looked at Quaker worship which is more of a silent approach to worship. We then finished our discussions thinking about what is more important, people/Christians or places/churches? We had some really great conversations and all contributed well. We then concluded the session by listing on post it notes everything that we had learnt and there was lots!! 📝
This week we looked at a Jewish place of worship. We watched some video clips and read some research. We then compared Orthodox and Reform beliefs.
This afternoon in RE, we discussed the reasons why people pray. It was great to hear the children come up with so many reasons and discuss who the people are that they go to in times of worry or when they need assistance. We also had mixed opinions as to whether they though prayer helped. We’ll look forward to exploring some examples of prayers in the next lesson.
This afternoon, Y2 explored videos and reading to understand what what we would find inside a mosque. We labelled the different areas of a mosque and learned what each area was for.
Our exit ticket was to discuss, ‘Why might it be helpful for Muslims to meet and spend time together?’
George said, ‘People won’t be lonely because they will be with friends. They could also teach each other how to pray.’
Alissa said, ‘They could meet new people.’
Harry said, ‘Their God would want people to be together and to be happy.’
This week, in RE we learnt what happens in a Mandir which is a Hindu place of worship. We watched several video clips and learnt about their different Gods and Goddesses. Did you know that Hindus worship in a Mandir but also have a shrine at home?
In our recent RE lesson we identified differences and similarities between a Baptist and Anglican Church. All together we then created a list of their beliefs on the corresponding features.
We are really enjoying learning about Christianity and other religions as we had very little background knowledge on the subject.
In RE why Muslims pray. We first discussed the difference between Christians and Muslims and found out that Muslims pray to God, Allah. We learnt the 6 main beliefs Muslims have: belief in Allah, belief in angels, belief in holy books (the Qur’an), belief in the prophets, belief in the day of judgement and the afterlife and belief in predestination. We then found out lots of information about the 5 pillars of Islam. We then completed the main beliefs Muslims and had a go at using calligraphy to write these out.
