You're here ... Home ... Lessons ... Year 4

Year 4: What religions are represented in our neighbourhood?

Introduction

Here children begin searching for information about local religious traditions using conventional materials and online resources.

What will the children learn?

  • The children will learn to check the relevance of information received.
  • The children will learn to make informed choices about what information is useful and what should be discarded.
  • What prior experience do the children need?
  • The children will ideally have a good general knowledge of how people express their religious beliefs.
  • The children would benefit from having word processing skills and experience of using the internet and sending emails.

Equipment

  • A range of phone books and other directories, maps and books about the local area
  • Computers with internet access
  • Multimedia projector, interactive whiteboard or large screen.

The Lesson

Before the lesson begins It is recommended that you familiarise yourself with local religious groups as some groups may need further investigation.

Tell the children that you are going to collect information about all the local religious groups to find out who they are and what they do. Ask the children what they know about religions in the local area and which religious groups any of them belong to.

Discuss with the children how they could find out more about local religions using books, directories and maps.

Discuss with the children how they would use online resources to find out about these religious groups. Remind the children about safe use of the internet.

Use a search engine on the internet to find a list of links to religions in your local area. You may wish to demonstrate fine tuning your search until you get a list of sites that looks like it will have the information you want.

Open up a selection of these sites, telling the children why you are choosing some links and not others. Demonstrate skim reading and moving through links quickly to see if the internet page has useful information or not. Explain to the children how you decide that some sites are not going to be useful. This could be, for example, that they link only to sites that are located a long way from your locality.

In pairs or small groups, perhaps working with an adult, ask the children to compile their own lists of local religious groups using all the resources they have.

Why are we using ICT?

  • The internet gives instant access to up-to-date, local information.
  • The sheer number of resources available on the internet means that the children need to develop the skills of accurately selecting the right words to search for. They also need to discriminate in their reading, to learn to reject sites that are not going to be useful.

References

QCA Schemes of Work ICT Unit 5B: Analysing data and asking questions: using complex searches
http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/schemes2/it/?view=get

QCA Schemes of Work RE Unit 4D: What religions are represented in our neighbourhood?
http://www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/schemes2/religion/?view=get

5-14 National Guidelines for the Curriculum in Scotland: *Religious Education 5-14 Roman Catholic Schools, Christianity and Other World Religions – Community, Worship, Sacred Places and Symbols, Level C – C4.2ICT, Searching and researching;, Level C
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/5to14/guidelines/index.asp
* RC guidelines were selected because they contain more detail than the guidelines for non-denominational schools.

Where do we go next?

The children can go on to design a questionnaire to send to the various religious groups to find out more about what they offer to the local community.

Differentiating the activity

You may want to provide more guidance to some groups asking them to search for particular religious groups.

Reflecting on their work

Discuss what happened when the children used the internet to search for information. Were skim reading and thinking about what they were reading helpful skills? Why?

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using books and directories?

How do the children think their findings so far could be developed?