Today in RE Year 4 looked at the Easter Story. Christians believe that Jesus was put on the cross for a reason, and was resurrected and sent to heaven. The children ordered the story and discussed how some key people would have felt through it, which linked to last week’s work on responding to suffering.

They decided that
Mary (mother) would have felt sympathy
Jewish leaders would have felt pleasure
Roman soldiers would have felt indifferent
Disciples would have felt empathy

These feelings are very natural when something happens and depending on who that person is, you may feel differently.

Have a look at some of their work.

Today Year 4 were discussing when it is easy and hard to forgive people as they were looking at Mercifulness and Forgiveness in RE.

It was clear to see that actually it depends on the circumstance as to if you felt it was easy to forgive. 

As we watched a video about some Christians and their play about forgiveness, we could see that they believe that God is forgiving and to forgive someone, regardless of what they have done, is very powerful.

Today Year 4  were looking at the disposition of “Being curious and valuing knowledge”. They looked at asking “why”.

The class came up with lots of questions they wanted to know the answers to. There were some weird and wonderful questions, some about school, some about the universe, some about science and some about Mrs Sabir…

They discussed if there was such a thing as a “bad question” and pretty much decided that there wasn’t. Being curious leads to finding answers and furthering knowledge that they did not have before. It can keep their brains ticking and help them to find out more.

Year 4 decided that asking “why” was great and very important.

What do you think?

What “why” question would you ask?

Today in RE, Robins discussed how faith and beliefs encourage us to have a positive way of living and understand that faith is a major influence on behaviour.

We looked at two examples.

1. Gandhi. – Gandhi was a Hindu. He spoke of “ahimsa”, which is inspired by the idea that all living things have the same spark of the divine spiritual energy and to hunt another being is to hurt oneself.  Click here to read more about him!

As a class, we discussed some positive messages from Gandhi.

2. Yusuf Islam – a famous Muslim. Once a successful musician and singer known as Cat Stevens, he converted to Islam in 1977.

Islam abandoned his musical career to concentrate on charitable works, aiming to build bridges between communities. He became involved with the creation of Muslim Aid and founded his own charity Small Kindness.

Small Kindness is a small, but international, aid charity. It focuses on:

• helping the most vulnerable in society through long-term support
• building sustainable futures for orphans, children, widows, and families

Extension: Watch below an animated version of Yusuf Islam’s Ramadan Moon song.

Robins were treated to a special RE lesson today. Mr Crooks took over! He took the opportunity to introduce a local church (St Nicolas’ Church, Kings Norton) and read an extract from the Bible.

Mark 7:1-13.

7 The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus ² and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. ³ (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. ⁴ When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.^[a])

⁵ So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”

⁶ He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:

⁸ You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.”

In this passage we learn that Jesus didn’t make his followers keep the food laws. He said that the Pharisees had got it wrong!

Moreover, we looked at how Christians believe that the essence of The Ten Commandments to be love for God and love for others.

The Most Important Command

³⁵ One Pharisee was an expert in the law of Moses. That Pharisee asked Jesus a question to test him. ³⁶ The Pharisee asked, “Teacher, which command in the law is the most important?”

³⁷ Jesus answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind.’^[a] 38 This is the first and most important command. ³⁹ And the second command is like the first: ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself.’^[b] 40 All the law and the writings of the prophets depend on these two commands.”

Finally, we had a discussion, if someone really loves God and really loves other people the way they love themselves – are any other laws needed?

The Book of Exodus tells how God called Moses to the top of Mount Sinai. God told him that he had chosen the Israelites as his special people. He would care for them and take them to a new land but they must keep the ten rules. He gave these rules to Moses, written on two stone tablets. The story is in the Tenakh or Old Testament of the Bible. (Exodus Ch. 19-20). The Torah (The Five Books of Moses) contains all of the commandments given to Moses for the Jewish people including the Ten Commandments.

Today Robins discussed the ten commandments and analysed the relationship in each commandment.

• They underlined in purple where the relationship refers to humans’ relationship with God.
• They underlined with blue pen where the relationship refers to human to human.

Hollie produced her own ten commandments. Watch below.

Robins have thought about the question,

How do you know you belong?

Welcome back Robins! 5.1.22

Welcome back Robins! The holiday must have revived us, as we have come back ready and rearing to go! We have shown lots of our behaviours for learning over the course of the day.

Today in RE, we were discussing the importance of listening. We wrote down our ideas and shared them with our partner and the class.

Afterwards, Mr Lo played a listening game with us. He said clues and we had to guess what they were.

For example:

What gets wetter the more it dries?

It’s a room and you can eat it!

Can you share some more?

Today we discussed what it is like to be peaceful and calm.

We talked about what meditation is and why Buddhists do it.

We then had a go at mindfulness meditation.

This morning in RE, the Robins in year 4 thought about what made them feel joyful.

Thoughts shared included:

Eason – I learnt some more Chinese.

Andrew – Going trampolining and family dinners.

Daisy – Going bowling.

Hollie – Spending time with my pets.

Naz – Going on an outing to London

We learnt about Diwali and what it meant to Hindus and Sikhs.

We watched how people celebrated, what they wore and want it meant to them.

We wrote an acrostic poem using the letters DIWALI about what makes us feel joy.