Resource 3

NATRE - National Association of Teachers of Religious Education Religious Education

Community cohesion and the prevention of violent extremism
A resource for teachers to use in the classroom


Resource title
Exploring Religion Around Me, edited by Joyce Mackley
Exploring Codes for Living – Exploring commitment: using digital storytelling, edited by Joyce Mackley
Source: http://www.natre.org.uk/cc/#3 – See details below
Outline
Religion is about believing, worshipping and valuing – about belonging to a faith community and living within the wider community. Helping children explore this wider concept of religion means engaging with believers and helping pupils to listen and talk to people of faith.

One way of helping pupils 'encounter' people from other faiths and beliefs is through listening to their 'story'. This helps increase their awareness of the different and distinct faith communities in the UK, and the contribution they make to their neighbourhoods and also to wider society.

Two activity pdfs are available from www.natre.org.uk/cc/#3. Both are extracts from the Primary Exploring a Theme primary RE curriculum series from RE Today, reproduced with permission, and illustrate strategies for teaching and learning, which teachers can adapt in their own contexts.

The resources describe:
  1. how digital story telling can be an effective mechanism for pupils to explore, present and reflect on their encounter with people of a variety of faiths and beliefs.
  2. interviews with young people from two faiths: Islam and Bahai. These pages illustrate a strategy for enabling pupils to 'meet and listen to' children from religions and communities they would not normally be in contact with. The interview structure shown on the page can be adapted by teachers for use with their own pupils to encourage them to identify questions they would like to ask children from the different religions and beliefs. Using email, pupils could participate in a dialogue around these 'interview' questions with children from other faiths.
These activities enable pupils to:
  • investigate the significance of religion in the local, national and global communities (AT1)
  • reflect on what it means to belong to a faith community, communicating their own and others' responses (AT2)
For a collection of interviews with young people from seven faiths see Exploring Religion Around Me, Ed. Joyce Mackley (2008), ISBN 978-1-904024-96-5 and Exploring Worship, Ed. Joyce Mackley (2009), ISBN 978-1-905893-13-3 both published by RE Today Services.
Links across other subjects within resource
ICT, Citizenship, English
Additional support