Secondary RE, PSHE and Citizenship - True Tube

How long have we accumulatively spent searching through the reams of videos that have been uploaded to You Tube in the hopes of finding a video clip to help our students to explore big social or global issues such as war or the environment and how useful would it be if we could find those rare clips that show different opinions and beliefs?!

www.truetube.co.uk

Welcome to True Tube. This website has been a god-send in assisting me with short and relevant video clips, to bring not just the issues but different beliefs and opinions into the classroom in a way that engages students. I have found this website particularly useful for my GCSE religious studies classes as a means of introducing a controversial topic or moral issue and sparking a discussion or debate, as well as allowing me to introduce different opinions and views, especially those from a faith perspective. There are also some very good resources for KS3 RE as well, such a ‘Holy Cribs’ which are tours of various places of worship by young people and clips explaining the 5 K’s of Sikhism and Muslim prayer.

www.truetube.co.uk

The website is well laid out and provides a really good range of free resources. Video clips are primarily sorted into 9 categories (Body and Health, Crime, Culture, the Earth, Ethics and Religion, Global, Jobs and Money, Relationships and Society) that you can click on and browse through, however each video clip has a number of key words linked to it, so if there is something specific that you are looking for, you can simply type in ‘Drugs’ and ‘Buddhism’ and it will list any clips that may be useful or relevant to you. The video clips provide a fresh and young approach to social and moral issues, which students can relate to. There is also a ‘staff room’ on the website which provides some thought provoking and interactive assembly plans and lesson plans which can give some ideas on how to further develop the information from the video clips within your lesson.

Teresa Langler
Head of Beliefs and Values
Clyst Vale Community College

Secondary RE - Engaging teens in the 'God' question...?

“But Miss, I don’t want to be a priest, so why do I have to learn about God?”

A familiar question I’m sure. I find within my subject there is often a flurry of such statements from students, particularly when they start the course in Year 9. As a department we have trialled various ‘strategies’ to engage them, and to make them see how important RE is!

The first change we implemented when I joined the department in 2005 was a re-brand to ‘Philosophy and Ethics’ as we felt this better matched not only our Year 9 curriculum, but the exam specifications we use for GCSE and A Level.  This name change received a very positive response, and helped to avoid the stigma of ‘RE’ without compromising delivery of the subject. However, I wonder whether we have almost become afraid to call our subject RE or RS for fear that the students won’t opt for GCSE, or will have a negative perception before their first lesson. Surely if we strive to truly engage them the name won’t matter?

Despite the new title, most tend to ‘click’ by about October half term that I am in fact delivering RE under a new guise, but by then the majority are on board. The secret I think is to grab them with the BIG questions – ‘Does God Exist’, ‘What happens when we die’, ‘The problem of suffering’ et al - to really show how RE is concerned with the things that matter. An open minded, un-shockable, and somewhat argumentative approach works really well – especially with the Dawkins fans (usually boys!). Of course, we’re never going to convince the entirety to see the value, especially when their parents (and in fact other staff), still view RE as reading parables and memorising the 66 biblical books. There is also growing concern about the E-Bacc, where RE is not one of the ‘Humanities’ (ludicrous!), only promoting a further negative energy.

However, as RE teachers, we can at least get students thinking in a reflective way about human experience and the world around them – which is crucial!

A few ideas to get started:

• ‘Look into each others eyes’ and ‘Hold hands’ is a fun way of starting the design argument.
• Good old Bruce Almighty is always a nice one for challenging stereotypes of what God is like and leads to discussing God’s attributes well (Dogma is an option for a female God character, but it’s harder to find a suitable clip here!).
• If death was….a sound, colour, animal place – is a good imagination exercise that gets to the concept of our interpretations of life after death.
• Near Death Experience gets them talking – try  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnOcvqMCrhs
• If you could ask God one question, what would it be? A good bell work task, followed by some teacher drama….”Because I have connections, God has granted us 5 mins of his time” etc, usually works well in triggering questions about The Problem of Evil!

We know RE gets to the heart of what is important – we just need to convince everyone else! And, in my experience so far, the Big Questions are a cracking way to engage young people from the start!

Esther Zarifi
Religious Studies, Philosophy & Ethics Teacher
Prudhoe Community High School

All Secondary - The Real Meaning of Christmas

So, Christmas is fast approaching and all the students want to do is watch a video or make Christmas cards, and frankly, you’re tempted to give in as it you’ve worked ridiculously hard and your thoughts are now turned towards your own lie-ins and recuperation… but what if you could have a Christmas based lesson that kept the students engaged and learning and was still fun? Here is an idea that can be used both in and out of the RE classroom!

Resources: A variety of old Christmas cards (just the fronts)

Step 1: In pairs/ small groups students imagine that they have never encountered or experienced Christmas before, perhaps they are aliens from another planet who have received these cards in the post. Students then identify as many different features about Christmas from the cards (Gifts, snow, robins, trees, stars, perhaps some people on a camel?!)

Step 2: In their groups, students can either try to piece together the meaning of Christmas only from the evidence they have gathered from the cards. They must try to include and explain the reasons for all of the features they have identified into a story about the festival and its meaning (they must not use any prior knowledge).

Step 3: Students feed their stories/ meanings of Christmas back to the class

Step 4: Discuss - What do students believe is the true meaning of Christmas? Did any of their presentations show any of this?

OR

Step 1: As above

Step 2: Students research the meanings of the different features/ symbolisms associated with Christmas from their cards.

Step 3: Create a leaflet to other ‘aliens’ who do not know about Christmas, where the festival originated from, what its symbolisms mean and what Christmas means to both Christians and non-Christians.

To make this a more meaningful RE-focussed lesson, students can compare the similarities and differences between the Christian and non-Christian elements, and explore whether there is a common link between the two (i.e the hope and promise of the new-born baby Jesus for Christians and the hope and promise of the return of light in the depth of winter for Pagans).

Wishing you all a relaxing end of term...!

Teresa Langler

Head of Beliefs and Values

Clyst Vale Community College

Secondary RE - How to Debate and Evaluate

Active Learning Strategies for Debating and Evaluating

I want to encourage my students to consider different opinions and views towards a social or moral issue, but I also want them to start developing evaluation skills too. At KS4, students must demonstrate the ability to evaluate which is more than just saying what different people think. It is much more about comparing views and exploring why some reasons are better than others. The GCSE changes a couple of years ago saw a shift in the weighting of the evaluation questions in the religious studies exams, but how can we help our students to develop this skill in an interactive way?

The following are some active learning strategies that I have found useful, not only in the actual discussing and debating of a topic but in helping young people to evaluate properly.

Conscience Alley
Give the class a moral dilemma, e.g. Imagine that you are a full time parent to your 2 children. You have no money left for the week and your children are screaming and crying because they are hungry. You walk into town and see the supermarket with all of its food. Would you steal some food for your children?

The students in the class have to decide whether they would or wouldn’t, and arrange themselves into 2 lines (one line which would steal, and one line which wouldn’t), facing each other with a gap between them big enough for someone to walk down – this is conscience alley. You will need a couple of students to slowly walk down conscience alley, and listen to the reasons that the other students give to try and persuade the individuals that they should or should not ‘steal’. The students in the lines should try to be as persuasive as possible. When the students have reached the end of conscience alley they will need to make their decisions and relay these to the class, explaining which arguments persuaded them and which reasons they did not think were good enough and why.

“Stay Standing if…”
All students must stand up. The teacher will have a number of statements relating to the topic/ issue being explored that students must either agree or disagree with. These will then be said with the starter “Stay standing if… you think the death penalty should be brought back into UK law”. Students make their decisions and either stay standing or sit down. The teacher circulates the classroom asking students to give their reasons for staying standing or sitting down, and asking students to say why they think that their reason/ opinion is stronger than that of someone with the opposite opinion to them.

Value Lines
This activity can be used in a variety of different ways. I have used this when reflecting upon the impact of the Holocaust on Jewish faith; when considering what age could be considered ‘old’ when looking at ageism; and when exploring class opinions towards a social or moral issue.

Give students a dilemma or statement that they need to make a decision on e.g. If you were Jewish and had survived the Holocaust do you think that you would be a theist, agnostic or atheist? Inform students that one side of the room is one view e.g. ‘atheist’, the other side of the room is the opposite opinion e.g. theist and the centre of the room is the middle decision e.g. agnostic. Students should get themselves into a line depending on what their view is. If your statement is based on an ethical or social dilemma e.g. “Capital punishment should be reintroduced to the UK” then the value line will be ‘agree’ at one end, ‘disagree’ at the other end and undecided in the centre.

Students are encouraged to explain and argue the reasons why they have placed themselves in their position along the value line. If a student explains their reasons and this changes the opinions of others, they are entitled to move, but they must explain why they found these reasons convincing or persuasive. You can also encourage students to explain why they disagree with other’s views and reasons.

All of these activities could be carried out as an introduction to a topic or even before the completion of a practice evaluation question for GCSE religious studies, as a way of encouraging students not just to consider other views, but to actively evaluate them as well.

Teresa Langler
Head of Beliefs and Values
Clyst Vale Community College

Secondary RE - Introducing Spirituality

Spirituality can be difficult to define and explain, so where can you start when trying to introduce the topic in a meaningful way to a class of 13 year olds?

An approach that has been successful for the students I teach is one that encourages students to reflect upon the evidence of their own experiences, which can then give them the empathy needed to truly understand what spirituality means to other people.

I start by encouraging the students to consider ‘things that make their spirits soar’. I give them my own accounts, (e.g. lying down on the grass on a sunny day with my friends and identifying the shapes in the clouds, or sitting on the cool sand on a cold autumn day snuggled into my hoody with a hot chocolate) and then students make a list of their own examples and experiences. The students always come up with great examples, from the feelings that they have when they wake up on Christmas morning, to the feeling of comfort and happiness hanging out with their best friends, not even having to say anything at all to each other. The more descriptive their examples are the better. The key is to get students to identify the feelings or emotions and to get them to share their ideas with others. There is always one student in the class who writes ‘sleeping’ which I don’t allow them to have, as you are not aware of feelings and emotions when you are sleeping. The example that I am still most impressed with is the response from a Year 8 boy who struggles both behaviourally and academically, who told the class about going ferreting on a cold, snowy day when he can’t feel his fingers or toes anymore and he has had no luck and is getting tired, and then he sees a rabbit dart from its warren, it makes him feel all warm inside to the point that he doesn’t feel cold anymore and his hope has been lifted.

This is what spirituality is about: exploring the feelings, emotions and effects of these simple events. By doing this, my students have come to understand that everybody experiences spirituality in different ways and that the feelings and emotions are a significant part of this. It can be very difficult to put these thoughts and feelings into words, but it allows students to gain an understanding which can help them through the rest of the unit, exploring how religious people express their spirituality through art or music or acts of worship. The teaching of spirituality should be separated from external and objective facts and observations, and instead should start with students' own experiences, then they can have true empathy and understanding when learning about and learning from religions.

Teresa Langler
Head of Beliefs and Values

Clyst Vale Community College