Religion (Stage 4)

The students in the Year 7 RE Newman class 2018 demonstrate the multiple intelligences (intra-personal, extra-personal, verbal-linguistic, visual-spatial, musical, body-kinesthetic and logical-mathematical) proposed by Howard Gardner (1983). Therefore, these students have been given numerous opportunities to develop their gifts.

The Newman program commenced in Term 2 2018 with the students studying the topic “Sacred Scripture” learning that the Bible is the inspired word of God which guides us in our everyday living.

The students worked in five groups and used the OIA method, to interpret five different passages of Scripture - The boy Jesus in the Temple, The Parable of the Sower, Jesus Calms a Storm, Jesus Walks on the Water, Jesus Prays on the Mount of Olives

OAI Method

O – Observation – What does it say? .

I – Interpretation – What does it mean?

A – Application – How can I apply it to my life

Each group enjoyed the experience of working collaboratively to make a PowerPoint presentation showing how the Bible passage inspired them. Students included appropriate artworks, music and video clips. Two groups even used their dramatic talents to act these stories and they made movies to include in their Powerpoint presentations.

LINKS:

This was followed by the students participating enthusiastically in many other group and individual activities in which they demonstrated their different talents.

Students demonstrated depth of spirituality in their responses to the task in which they had to imagine that they were a 25 years old Jewish female and had to write a letter to a non-Jewish friend describing the communal experiences of the Passover and the Exodus experienced as a 12-years old girl and had to justify their deep faith in God ever since these events. Watching videos of the Passover and the Exodus prior to the task enabled the students to “experience” these events.

The creative talents of the students were evident in another task where they had to view Caravaggio’s artwork ‘Sacrifice of Isaac’, view a video, read the Scripture passage and imagine that they were Abraham and had to write a response beginning with the words” I couldn’t believe that…” giving the thoughts of Abraham when he was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac. This experience enabled them to appreciate Abraham's deep faith in God and to be inspired by his example.

The topic ended with the students learning about the call of Abraham, the call of Moses and the call of Samuel, the New Covenant and the students reflecting on the relevance of the New Covenant to their lives, the implications and their responsibilities.

The next topic studied was "Ways of Praying".

The students learnt about prayer and then reflected on how Jesus’ teachings and example show us the importance of prayer. They also researched well-known people such as Pope Francis, Bethany Hamilton, Nick Vujicic and reflected on how these people show us the importance of prayer. This was followed by the students interviewing significant people to find out whether it is worth bothering to pray. All these experiences enabled the students to realise the importance of prayer in their lives. The students demonstrated their depth of understanding by writing very meaningful prayers of blessing, petition, intercession, thanksgiving and praise; by compiling a book of traditional prayers and devotions to help Catholics develop their relationship with God and by writing a dialogue between two people discussing how different forms of prayer are used in the liturgical celebration of the Catholic Mass. The topic ended with the students working collaboratively and using their creative talents to produce very meaningful liturgies for different seasons in the Liturgical Cycle – Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter.

2017:

Year 7 Religion class this term has been centred around “The Bible - Sacred Scripture”. Students were asked to design a presentation based on the different books of the Bible.

It was a challenging task in that some time was spent researching the historical, wisdom,prophecy, poetry, the Gospel, the letters and the Pentateuch books and realising the importance of the ethical guidelines embedded within each of these books.

Year 7 students managed to see the significant differences between the Old and New Testament. The most challenging part for the students was to select a Bible story, discuss its imagery, significance and then develop it into a modern day version.

These are some of the evaluations of Year 7 students:

This group task was very interesting and allowed me to further understand the Bible and how it works.The part of the task where you were asked to write the reflection on each of the bible books made us really sit and think about how best to reflect the meaning and imagery of each book.My favourite part was when we chose a story and we had to describe the imagery and finally retell the story in a modern day version. I really enjoyed presenting this task to the rest of the class.. Ava Camillos

During the time of completing this task, I learnt far more than i thought I would, I had lots of fun and i was able to broaden my knowledge on the Bible. I especially enjoyed it as a group task , being able to work with friends as well as learning too ! It made the task fun and enjoyable and I looked forward to every religion class. Ruby Thomasyu

I found the task quite enjoyable and fun. I enjoyed learning about the books of the Bible and what they mean. I found it interesting how all the books are different and they all carry different messages. I learnt what the Letters and Revelation mean and the stories from the section of the Bible. I also liked how we all had to complete one Bible reference and write a modern day version of it. Our group chose Noah’s Ark as it is a well known story from the Bible and we all thought it was a good and enjoyable task. Isabella Palm