Teaching Islam

I so enjoy these RE lectures. I love exploring different faiths. Although I feel slightly pressured to get everything right as they know I've been teaching RE! Perhaps I should have kept that underwraps?

Today's session was about Islam, which totally fascinates me. We recapped on the different targets - AT 1 & AT 2 and that it should be 50:50 ideally.

We also looked at how a curriculum is put together - either systematically, or thematically. Having talked about this a lot, a thematic structure would be wonderful, but I remember when we got down to it at Orleans, we went with a systematic approach because of the ease of planning. It would be wonderful to explore themes like light, birth, death, environment, etc etc. What a wonderful way to approach RE.

One of the best things in this session was having the opportunity to ask the Muslim women in the group anything about their faith. It was lovely hearing them talk about their journey of wearing the headscarf and how they go about Zakat. Really special conversations.

We talked about some basic facts about Islam and how it is one of the Abrahamic religions. I was super surprised when Sarah said that we wouldn't talk about that at primary school. I begged to differ!!!! It's so wonderful to draw parallels between religions and help children realise how similar we all are!

We talked about the significance of the number 5 - 5 heads of Sheba, 5 marks on Jesus' body, 5 Ks, 5 Pillars..... You could totally then expand that with children and ask them what 5 values or beliefs they hold.

We got into groups and talked about the 5 pillars. It was lovely having Nadia in the group to expand on what we had researched.

The rest of the lecture slides have info about Islamic art, calligraphy, etc.