You never know what to expect with parents’ evenings. Some go well. Others you have to steel yourself for, knowing that there will be some tricky customers along the way, some hard facts to face or some issues to address. How well have the students done? What are the expectations of their parents? At the same time how can you convey pithy information about their progress and targets as well as what they have done in RE or can look forward to learning about in the forthcoming year? Statistics, data, results, forecasts, predictions are often the currency of this kind of discussion. But at other times the priority is mainly about boosting confidence, talking about study skills and revision techniques, encouraging dialogue at home about the topics covered, what strengths the student demonstrates. A smile and a handshake end the five minutes you are allocated, which usually go all too quickly.

Yr 9 Options Evening can prove daunting and not for the faint-hearted, especially with all the uncertainty over EBacc and the future of RS at exam level. Turning negative points and attitudes into positive ones is a skill that is demanded when parents comment that their son or daughter really likes the subject and then adds blankly ‘I don’t know where they get it from, because it’s not from me’. Throwing down the gauntlet with this opening gambit is just asking for a reaction, isn’t it? Usually, I discuss the merits and benefits of the subject with parents compared to ‘our day’ when it was so different. Pushing a sample syllabus under their noses and going through one or two examples often has parents commenting that they wished it had been like that when they were at school or shyly admitting a secret interest in the subject. The new specifications concentrating on Philosophy of Religion and Ethics are a definite hit in this respect. The thinking skills aspect of it and emphasis on debate usually wins parents’ approval straight away as they see the useful, transferable skills for the jobs’ market. Others latch on to the philosophy aspect and can see real benefits in stretching and challenging one’s own thought processes.

However, imagine my surprise when the tables were turned recently. Usually it is me who is doing the hard sell at Options Evening, steering parents away from misapprehensions about the subject or talking about the way the subject not only complements Arts subjects but can also be a good foil for those interested in the Sciences. Instead, I was greeted with parents confidently saying that despite issues about EBacc and uncertainty over RE, they still wanted their children to take the subject and that they were going to support them in that choice. I could have hugged the parent who greeted the parents following on by saying ‘Take the subject, it’s great.’ What better PR than parents selling the subject to other parents, their children and the wider community? Now there’s a strategy that would be worth developing further.

Jim Robinson

Autumn 2011

Film is a wonderful resource for RE, and while it’s tempting to stick to the films that boldly display their RE themes – Bruce Almighty, The Greatest Story Ever Told, The Prince of Egypt – there is a lot to be gained from the ones we might be passing over. Two of my classroom favourites are the classic children’s film E.T. and the somewhat gruesome Blood Diamond. I also favour superhero films and the entire Harry Potter canon, where themes of good and evil, loyalty, betrayal and personal sacrifice are played out in child-friendly sequences: everyday morality writ large. However, it can sometimes be difficult to decide how to tease out the RE aspects, and how best to use a film to support a topic.

Finding a religious thread in modern Western cinema is a fairly simple affair – even the most saccharine Disney film contains conflict and dilemma (the key elements of moral choice), and the testosterone-fuelled antics of Hollywood schlock like Cowboys and Aliens can provoke discussion about violence, retaliation and teamwork. Find a point to develop from and see how far you can chase the thread through the plot. It may only work for you in a single scene, or it might arc over the entire plot, but you need to be familiar enough with it that you can expand upon it for your class. For the hesitant, I have included a brief list of suggestions for various topics at the end of the text.

After identifying your film and its RE theme, the first consideration one must make is whether enough lesson time is available for what you want to show. Obviously, one class a fortnight only gives enough space for short clips, whereas an allocation of five lessons allows the luxury of studying a whole film. Time available greatly affects the choice of film, as some issues may be presented as part of a plot too convoluted to abridge. For example, Blood Diamond in unsuitable for short clips as most of the ethical considerations of the diamond trade come from the characters’ entire story arc. I have, however, used the ‘going home’ sequence from E.T. (about 20 minutes of fantastic ascension imagery) as a stand-alone clip in a single lesson.

The next task is to decide exactly what the class should be learning from the clip, and how you are going to achieve it. Students need something to focus their mind on the points in hand, rather than having the opportunity to let their minds wander. A sheet of questions to be answered during the film, ranging from factual (main characters’ names, brief scene descriptions) to critical (do you think X’s actions were right?) ensures that the students are led through the main points of your selection. For a short clip, making a list of keys words summarising the scene’s emotions, action, imagery etc., is a good focus task that can be tailored to the ability and maturity of the class. This is also the point in planning where you can firmly decide whether the content is suitable for your class – it goes without saying that your first point of reference needs to be the school policy for using age-rated films!

Lastly, I think that it is important to keep referring to the film during the lesson or topic – it is a resource for helping achieve clarity, and by failing to repeat the connection there is a risk that students may miss the point, wasting the usefulness of the clip. For example, younger students could have discussion questions about the characters that link to the topic (How does Elliott feel when E.T. goes home? Use this to help you explain how the disciples might have felt at Ascension.) whereas older students can answer more complicated essay questions (‘Criminals are always immoral people.’ Discuss with reference to the ferry scene in The Dark Knight.). Team up with Drama or English to script and perform role plays based on what the students think the characters’ moral choices should be, or create posters for the film that belie the morals discussed in class.

Students love films, and it’s great that we can harness this enthusiasm and use it to support the important issues that our subject raises. A clip from a gripping movie is going to stick in a child’s mind far longer than any case-study from a dry textbook, with the same educational benefits. By being selective about the films we use, and creative in our approaches to related tasks, we can create lessons that will stay with our pupils for years to come and that will hopefully be remembered every time they watch their favourite films.

Aladdin (1992)- ethics of crime, materialism

Any superhero film ever – the ethics of vigilantism

Avatar (2009) – environmental ethics, exploitation, war

Blood Diamond (2006) – business ethics, consequences of actions, personal sacrifice, ethics of journalism, child soldiers, slavery, corruption, arms trade

Captain America (2011) – (particularly grenade sequence in training) what is goodness?, war, sacrifice

District 9 (2009) – immigration, segregation

Dogma (1999) – a rude but searingly insightful look into the rules of man and God, and the politics of religion

Evan Almighty (2007) – call to witness

Fight Club (1999) – identity, use of violence, cult behaviour

Hotel Rwanda (2004) – genocide, bravery, ethics of peacekeeping

Spiderman (2002) (Tobey Maguire version) – responsibility of power (particularly the death of Uncle Ben)

Star Trek (1966-2009) – personal sacrifice, revenge / retribution

The Dark Knight (2008) – moral dilemmas, morality of criminality

X-men I, II & III (2000, 2003, 2006) – identity, intolerance

Celia Warrick

Autumn 2011

For some people VLEs or Virtual Learning Environments are the best thing since sliced bread as they give you the opportunity to interact with students in ways that were previously not possible. For others, they are a nightmare and a dumping ground for worksheets that students won’t access. The vast majority of schools now have a VLE, which should in theory enable students to access learning materials from home. In most cases, it is the responsibility of the Head of Department or subject teacher to put content onto the VLE and then encourage students to access it. But some teachers do not have the time (or technical know how) to make interactive resources which appeal to students.

However, there are some simple ways in which you can use the VLE and make your department the talking point of the school VLE community. Firstly, if the VLE has a message or forum board, ask the person in charge to set up an RE section within it. Some students (even at A Level) find it hard to take part in class discussions, especially if they get a little heated. A nice and easy to set up homework task (which works especially well at A Level) is to start a thread with a quotation (ones from Richard Dawkins tend to work well) or a link to a news article and ask students to respond to it. I ask my students to respond twice, with them having to give a response to the previous opinion (remembering to explain why!) before concluding with their own. I then start the lesson going through the posts, asking students to expand on points that they have made. This is a nice, safe and moderated way of getting all students involved within a discussion using a format that they are comfortable with.

For most students, crosswords are not that exciting. However, using Eclipse Crossword Maker (http://www.eclipsecrossword.com), which is available via a free download, you can easily make interactive crosswords for the VLE. Simply enter your answers and clues before setting the size of the grid. The programme will then automatically make the crossword for you. You can just print out the grid and clues, but the programme gives you the option to save the crossword as a webpage. If you do this, you can then upload the page onto your VLE. Students then click on a word to find out the clue and enter the answer onto the screen. The vast majority of students I teach seem to prefer this method of crossword completion!

However, you can also make more interactive and exciting games using Content Generator (http://www.contentgenerator.net).  This website offers a range of interactive games which are available to purchase either individually or as bundles. But, for the cash-strapped RE department, there are some which are available to download free of charge. This can be done very easily and you make the games by completing a template. I have found that both my low ability Year 10 GCSE and A2 groups both found space invaders to be very addictive, and by having a leaderboard of high scores, the revision sessions became very competitive. The best thing about these games (from a teacher point of view at least), is that to achieve high scores, students must answer questions – whether it being to correctly identify a key word from it’s definition or to select the correct answer from a multiple choice list. You can download Fling the Teacher; Space Invaders and Half a Minute free. If you want to see what the other games are like, then you can try out the other games such as Penalty Shoot Out, Grade or No Grade, and Hoop Shoot before buying courtesy of RS Revision (www.rsrevision.com) – an excellent site from Arnewood School. For those who are a bit more technical, the games can be made SCORM compliant, which means that they will link up to any markbook you have within the VLE and student scores will be automatically entered for you.

You can  use VLEs to direct students towards useful blogs and other on-line resources – Stephen Law’s blog (http://stephenlaw.blogspot.com/) can be useful for A Level students whilst the REonline material for Post 16 (http://reonlineorg.wpengine.com/ks5/indexx.php) can also be a good starting point for them to complete any independent research. You can also use them to host any multimedia materials that you have purchased or got hold of, for example the Reflections DVD that has just been sent out to school from RE Quest, or the Worship DVD produced by REonline, with students being asked to watch a clip from it for homework. This could also work with any clips you have downloaded from sites such as Wingclips or Youtube or as part of a webquest.

This is not a comprehensive guide to what can be done with a VLE, but hopefully will give you an idea of what can be included and free resources are available to make your VLE presence more exciting!

Ian Hartley (Head of RS, Ridgeway School)

There are those that would argue that RE should not appear on the primary school timetable at all. As RE professionals we have to ensure that our voices are heard above all this negativity that has been so apparent in the media recently. RE is important, particularly in this educational climate. But why? A  brief illustration of the importance RE can be summed up by this story:

A friend’s 8 year old daughter saw a Sikh gentleman while shopping one day and whispered to her mum:

“Look mummy, that man’s a genie.”

This was not said in jest nor a reflection of parental prejudice but was an innocent comment from a little girl using her own frame of reference.

A fuller answer to the question is that to begin with, RE is an intrinsic part of an effective education which must include holistic experiences. Primary schools support this holistic development in various ways through the hidden curriculum as well as the formal one. A simple summary of how we see children develop from 5-11 is below:

KS1 – ME! (needs and wants), discovery, senses, exploring the world around them.

LKS2 – ME! (personality), making sense of the world, looking beyond themselves.

UKS2 – ME! (making my mark), finding their place in the world, looking beyond the everyday

RE is a key contributor to children being able to interact and make sense of the world around them.

This can be explored further in relation to attitudes supported by the Non-Statutory National Framework which I have sub-divided into Key Stage progression:

Religious Education has influenced and shaped our world, history, science and art for over 2000 years. Therefore it is crucial in helping us to understand our own lives in relation to those around us. Children can explore relationships with others in their community, their ideas, beliefs and motivations. If they have a better understanding of faith and beliefs, they can engage with them further, reflect on them and learn from them. Through good primary RE, we encourage children to question these beliefs which leads to a deeper understanding of others and themselves in our diverse, global society. If RE is sidelined from the curriculum, we risk children having a blinkered and distorted view of the world around them. This will impact upon their ability to make sense of local and global events and hinder their discovery of where they fit into it all.

In addition to RE informing values, addressing questions of meaning and combatting prejudice, It also provides children with high level thinking skills which can be utilised across the curriculum.

Where else in the curriculum are children offered these opportunities which ultimately prepare them for adult life?

This is why RE is essential to an effective primary education.

Emma McVittie

Like film, television is something that a lot of RE teachers may have already used as a resource. A lot of clips specifically for classroom use are produced and these are often of a factual documentary type, but what use can we make of the everyday programmes that students are already familiar with? Below are some examples of TV programmes and how they might be used effectively. These should be easy to apply across genres to a huge range of programmes and episodes.

The Simpsons

This is one of my favourite television resources – far from being a mere family cartoon, it can be a searing commentary on social themes from xenophobia to religion. A brilliant resource for any RE department to have is the ‘Heaven and Hell’ compilation DVD (available for only a few pounds online). This collection includes:

●      ‘Homer the Heretic’, featuring Homer deciding that he doesn’t have to go to church to be religious and is wonderful when used in conjunction with Ninian Smart’s 7 Dimensions – how many of the dimensions are in Homer’s version of Christianity?

●      ‘In Marge We Trust’ shows the need to be a good citizen and the dilemmas that might face one.

●      ‘Bart Sells His Soul’ can be used to talk about the nature of influence as well as raising questions about the very idea of the soul.

If you have a great deal of time in your lessons then entire episodes can be used, but some episodes are suitable for cutting down into short clips, particularly the latter example. There is a huge amount of material available, covering almost every RE topic, but these are a good starting point.

Eastenders/Coronation St. etc.

Soap operas are a fantastic way to illustrate small-scale conflicts and family dramas. It is inevitable that within any few given weeks a soap opera will show a moral dilemma – sometimes a euthanasia struggle, an abortion, a clash of loyalties – that can be used to easily show the ‘real-world’ application of GCSE modules in ethics or how one should apply the various philosophical codes of ethics propounded in the A-level syllabuses. Episodes are often available on the channels’ on-demand websites and occasionally on YouTube. Soap operas are only really useful for small clips as the individual story arcs tend to be dragged out over a few weeks, but with a brief written introduction to the characters a short clip illustrating the most pertinent points of the dilemma can be an excellent illustrative tool. They especially lend themselves to role plays of the dilemma and its resolution.

Doctor Who

I have chosen Doctor Who as an excellent illustration of children’s television in general. It has story-lines that are fairly sophisticated, yet easily understood and very clearly presented. Like films for children, the equivalent television programmes feature a wide range of moral choices in a style that appeals to our students. A great double-episode of the previous series – The Hungry Earth & Cold Blood – deals with the place of indigenous races and immigration, whereas the finale of Tennant’s first series can be used to illustrate the finer points of moral actions during war (‘Is it right to eradicate a retreating army?’). For the most part, use of these programmes may be restricted due the general necessity to show an entire episode (or even more), although one may choose to watch up until a dilemma or cliff hanger and base a couple of lessons’ work on how the class would resolve it. If used as a starting point for an entire scheme of work, the use of whole episodes could be justified.

On the whole, using television in the classroom shares a lot of its benefits and restrictions with the use of film. However, the timescale of events in television is often a lot longer. While this does create issues with watching the whole story arc play out, it does often mean that the themes are explored in a lot more detail with a lot more empathy for the characters involved. With a little creativity, an excellent term’s work that deals with a range of different issues can be teased out of one episode, making it excellent value-for-money in terms of time spent watching. Who knows, eventually your students may start recommending episodes to you themselves.

Celia Warrick

With the new Ofsted framework (2010) defining ‘Outstanding’ RE as involving risk, creativity and independence, incorporating drama and role play can be an interesting way of allowing students to explore themes and stories within RE.

Christian parables lend themselves particularly well to student productions, or indeed modern adaptations, of familiar stories. Some particularly engaging examples have come through creating modern versions of the ‘Good Samaritan story’. Here one particularly successful aspect involved developing the characters of the Levite and the Priest for 21st Century society. Similarly, students can consider the modern meaning of ‘prodigal’, including exploring where the prodigal son might go and what he might do within his period of liminality. All members of the class might be involved in the production latterly by creating ‘freeze frames’ of different parts of the story. The production could be repeated; the repeat enables other students to enter as new characters and alter the course of events. Furthermore, ‘freeze frames’ can be utilised in dramatising important concepts or themes within RE, for example, suffering, sin or sacred.

Familiar stories in RE can be performed using a ‘Reflection Alley’, whereby two groups of students become different sides of the conscience of a protagonist in a story. This has worked particularly well with figures such as Job, Abraham, Siddhartha Gautama or Rama who encounter various forms of personal struggle.

Imagination can further be extended through creation of imaginary places which students actively present to the group. Students could be encouraged to create the ideal place, Heaven or Nirvana, and invite the class to participate in a ‘guided tour’ of their perfect place. They would take the class on a journey of what the place is like, who might believe in the place and what they might need to do to get there. Other students could then record their experiences and feelings during the tour.

Groups of students who are preparing for an exam might prefer to act out a concept or argument in terms of movement; for example, standing in a position on an ‘opinion line’ depending on how strongly they agree or disagree with a certain statement. Students could then be asked to justify their opinions and perhaps create an argument. Higher ability students might be asked to represent a different opinion to their own or encouraged to reassess their opinions and perhaps change sides based on the activity. The content of GCSE RE can be approached using the means of drama, allowing students to create diary entries, newspaper articles or dramatic scenes. Particularly successful examples have been diary entries of pilgrimage journeys, journalists at the scene of a miracle, creating film scripts and movies about human rights and radio programmes interviewing religious believers.

Finally, role-play can be employed at all levels to allow students to explore different points of view. Different beliefs in God could be explored by devising conversations between theists, atheists and agnostics. An imaginary trip to a place of worship by different members of a family or community can help students to understand the impact and importance of a sacred place for different people. Students could be engaged in the concepts of conflict and war by planning a conversation between a Quaker and someone who believes in ‘Just War’. Lower ability students could be supported by giving key words, for example reconciliation, pacifism or the principles of ‘Just War’, in order to scaffold their answers. Religious Experience could be discovered by embodying the positions of a believer and a sceptic engaging in an imaginary conversation about a miracle or vision. Furthermore, ethical dilemmas such as abortion, euthanasia or stem cell research can be evaluated by acting out possible responses of different involved parties. By assuming the roles of God, a parent, a Doctor or an unborn child, students can better convey and understand the diversity of responses to a contentious issue.

Overall, drama and role play allow greater understanding of diversity and empathy, encouraging students to consider that people respond differently to stories and issues within RE. By actively involving students in the learning, they will ultimately develop greater skills of independence, creativity and engagement with the issues.

Frances Lane

Stretching Able, Gifted and Talented Students to explore challenging concepts in RE

Research shows that “more able students often represent the most neglected group” (Best and Craven 2009) in schools, where teachers often give greater attention to their students with EAL and SEN in achieving the ‘all’ and ‘most’ lesson objectives. But what should we be doing for the ‘some’? Students should not just be doing extra work but activities which stimulate and extend them above and beyond their peers. The following represent a number of strategies which have been found to be useful for the select ‘some’ to begin exploring and using concepts beyond those normally taught in the classroom. The strategies can be used in both homogenous and heterogeneous ability groups.

Many gifted and Talented pupils excel at completing problem solving activities, which in RE can be in the form of ‘mysteries’ or challenging questions. Higher Order Thinking can be created by designing questions around higher National Curriculum Levels, for example,  ‘Why do people from one religion believe and do different things?’, which helps students develop the skills of considering diversity within religions. Similarly, giving students a number of props from which they need to ascertain the learning question can activate the imaginations of AG&T students, for example, giving students spades, a money box and a picture of poverty is a way of allowing students to be enterprising and independent in terms of solving the problem of poverty or interrogating organisations which try to solve poverty. Similarly, presenting students with images or artefacts unmediated by questions or teacher-created categories will allow AG&T students to create their own questions or activities. Giving students the task of creating parts of the learning for themselves or for teaching to other classes will also challenge AG&T students.

Hot-seating (encouraging students to play different characters when examining an issue) is useful for challenging AG&T students but can also be adapted to ‘Class Champion’ where students respond sensitively to the questions of their peers. The winning student who can answer and ask the most challenging questions becomes the champion. This allows students to be in charge of pace and gives agency to AG&T students for debriefing the class.

Giving students greater choice in their learning is an engaging activity for AG&T students.  For example, creating a desk or area called the ‘Learning Centre’ where AG&T students can choose the activities they want to do. Creating learning menus, from which students are able to govern the selection and order of their learning engages and enables independence for AG&T students. Furthermore, allowing AG&T students to ‘buy back’ their time by crediting students for what they already know and allowing them to bypass work at levels they have already achieved.

‘Spin off projects’ in which students are encouraged to make a record of the learning, for example, creating symbolic representations of ideas, radio programmes or imaginary interviews with believers which summarise the beliefs or lifestyles which have been learnt about. Visits to places of worship engage all students, but AG&T students might create imaginary journalist pieces or record their stream of thoughts and experiences as they walk around. In a similar vein, successful activities have been producing a faith directory of the class or local area using search engines, visual investigation and questionnaires. Similarly, students could complete a news investigation of a theme or historical concept and show the modern implications of it e.g. discrimination, suffering or changes to religious buildings.

Imagination can further be stimulated by creating activities where students can be journalists telling the story of an important event, for example, the birth or death of Jesus. Another related activity might be to analyse or create stories which are told from different points of view to draw out more complex ideas and issues from familiar stories, for example eyewitness accounts of the miracles or parables of Jesus.

Finally, AG&T students benefit from mentoring and leadership roles within the classroom which can be gained through allowing students to lead certain parts of the learning. They can also be given certain roles within a group e.g. manager or presenter, in order for them to take greater direction over their peers. Similarly, AG&T students could lead the work of lower years.

Overall, AG&T learners can benefit from greater independence, mystery, imagination, choice, mentoring and removal of scaffolds, which, when integrated into AG&T activities, can create success student engagement and enjoyment of the subject.

Frances Lane

Following on from Jim Robinson’s article on Lesson Starters, here is an example of a good lesson starter that has been used successfully for both Key Stage 3 and 4 students.

Pick a Card, Any Card can provide an effective Assessment for Learning opportunity and engage the students, appealing to several different learning styles.  The activity itself can be as elaborate or simple as required and be adapted to any scheme of work where opinions and their underlying reasons are being explored.

Preparation

-Produce a number of ‘opinion cards’, some with For and some with Against on them.

-Produce a number of cards with the names of belief traditions on them, e.g. Hinduism (change the number of belief traditions according to the context of the lesson).

-Produce a card with One Minute Wonder written on it.

-Stick the cards up around the classroom face down, keeping the different groups separate so you can easily direct the students as appropriate.

Activity

Briefly introduce the topic(s) you want to discuss (e.g. vegetarianism).  Having selected which student should go first (e.g. by asking a general knowledge question and choosing the person who puts their hand up first), ask them to take down one of the cards.  You can either let them choose freely or direct them.

The player reads out what is written on the card then provides a reason to support that view (For or Against) that a believer might hold about the topic.  For example, if the topic is vegetarianism, on picking an Against  card a student might propose the argument that one should eat animals since meat is part of a balanced diet and therefore necessary to stay healthy.

In the same game, if a belief tradition card is selected, the student would need to discuss the topic in that context.  For example, if the Hindu card is picked, the player might comment that Hindu beliefs on eating animals are affected by their belief in reincarnation.  If the One Minute Wonder card is chosen, the student must talk about the topic for one minute.

Further Developments

The length of this activity is flexible, but it is worth bearing in mind students’ desire to complete all the cards.  Therefore don’t produce more cards than are necessary.

There is plenty of room to embellish the exercise.  For example, the concept of Consult a Classmate (reminiscent of ‘Phone a Friend’) could be introduced to enable fuller class participation.

Benefits and Intended Learning Outcomes

• The activity could be used in work on almost any subject/ theme.
• It breaks away from more traditional ‘find out and write about’ activities.
• It can be used to engender full class participation and bonding.
• It can be used to review work / or show evidence of research of a topic /study of theme.
• Detail of work expected and set out on the cards could be used to assess students’ work at different levels.

Conclusion

The usefulness of strong, relevant lesson starters should not be underestimated but it is important to select one that is most appropriate for the topic, the class, the students etc.  Pick a Card, Any Card has the potential to cause noise and movement so might not be best suited to particularly rowdy classes.  However, the activity is extremely flexible in terms of, length and embellishment as well as the topics it can be used for.  It is a good Assessment for Learning activity, appealing to different learning styles and an element of competition can be especially engaging for the boys in the class.

Lucy Butler

Think of the opening sequence of a film. Let’ say ‘Gladiator’ for example, or Star Wars. Do you remember it? How about the opening chords of ‘Blue Danube’ by Johann Strauss? Does it evoke a feeling, a mood? Is it memorable? Composers, writers and even master chefs know the importance of starters to captivate, preface or foreword what will hopefully be a moment and experience to remember and savour. Starters, openers, call them what you will, they tell you within the first few seconds, minutes at the most, what you are likely to be getting next, whether you will like it or not.  They can get you in the mood, intrigue you, and make you want more.

Working on this principle and pre-empting the question of whether we can have a fun lesson in RE today, starters may be the essential yet often missing ingredient of any RE lesson plan. Some RE teachers are already adept at it or do it instinctively and their lessons are fun, captivating and memorable. Most of us are often too busy to give this part of the lesson any thought. Yet good lesson starters may hold the key to making RE lessons enjoyable, something students look forward to and talk about afterwards. This can all be achieved within the first few minutes of a lesson.

If we work on the principle that the three peaks of concentration in any lesson occur at the beginning, middle and end, then the beginning is where we might be wise to invest more energy and thought rather than the more traditional plenary at the end when we aim to consolidate learning. Given that most school days for any student are a mix of lessons, each with different demands, styles of learning and materials, then perhaps it is worth pausing for a moment to consider what a student might expect when coming into an RE lesson. How will it be different to the other lessons yet the same in terms of expectations and the overall learning experience?

Psychologically, students need a moment to re-adjust from let’s say Maths to RE, to understand the lay of the land by visual clues such as the layout of the tables, the displays on the wall, the way the teacher greets you as you enter, the initial activity which may be familiar and routine or may be unexpected and designed to jolt you into a certain way of thinking. Looked at in this way, lesson starters could be seen as warm up activities designed to realign the focus of students to an RE way of thinking in much the same way as you might limber up before a strenuous PE lesson or a demanding drama exercise.

The secret then is to find intriguing new ways to enliven the beginning of your lesson so that your students are with you from the start, wanting to learn, to join in and settle to the main focus of the class. But we have to be pragmatic about this. Do you really want a starter that is designed to encourage noise, movement and activity with a class that is already quite a handful, or do you want one to be completely the opposite and geared more to settling them? Would one kind of starter be more suitable to a particular sort of lesson over another, a morning lesson rather than an afternoon one, for example? Could lesson starters be interwoven with the usual things any teacher has to do when a class comes into the room such as taking the register, going over learning objectives, getting all the resources distributed so that all the students go with the familiar and recognised routine? Could you combine taking the register with asking the students individually to recap from a previous lesson or get them to solve a puzzle or mystery?

The balance is important as is being realistic about what you can achieve within those first few moments of any lesson. What is clear is that these few moments offer a unique opportunity to captivate and intrigue and to set the mood for the rest of the lesson: the battle for hearts and minds is often either lost or won in them.  When the stakes are this high, lesson starters in RE are vital in every sense of the word.

Jim Robinson

If we are to believe the Oxford English Dictionary, museums are buildings where items of historical and scientific interest are ‘stored and exhibited’. What you can be sure of is that more or less every city in the country has one and that they are brilliant places to find RE resources and ideas.

Most of us have a favourite museum amongst these ‘national treasures’ and most are still free, even if they do request donations from visitors. Several have had a revamp of some kind or another recently and, like the British Museum, are becoming more family friendly, laying on free workshops and events such as the Mexican Day of the Dead in 2009, which was so popular you could barely squeeze past to see the dancing, hear the music or taste the specially prepared food. Nowadays there are sleepovers for kids and high quality lectures for the grown ups. And if you want to take things a step further and have free access to exhibitions and special discounts, you can join as a Friend of the museum and feel good about doing your bit to preserve collections for the future. This way you also get to hear of events way before they happen through monthly ‘What’s on?’ guides. But beware, sometimes the cost of Friend membership can be high and you have to think about how much you are likely to use the museum over the course of a year.

So how can you use a museum as an RE teacher? Well, you might be surprised at what is on offer and what you can find out if you know where to look and, crucially, who to ask. First off, most museums have an education department as well as different kinds of learning resources, many of which are increasingly online and digital or else available as printed documents. But working with education departments in museums needs some prior preparation. Bear in mind that not all are geared to both secondary and primary level. Often it is a case of being very specific about the needs of RE, especially if you are thinking of arranging a visit to see a specific gallery or an exhibition. Museums will get in touch about special exhibitions, such as the ‘Hajj: journey to the centre of Islam’ exhibition at the British Museum in 2012, which attracted over 140,000 visitors. If you cannot get to exhibitions such as this, there is often an online presence that trails away afterwards and artefacts or videos are available in museum shops linked to the exhibition, which can provide useful resources. If you do decide to use the services of an education department you need to be specific about what you want from them and be prepared, if they ask, to give a small donation. Often their services are free but it is important to check first. Museums, like many other institutions, rely on donations and do not get a lot, if any, government funding. A small donation will help them as well as you when you come to arrange another visit.

The clue about the kind of resources you might be able to use in a museum lies in its definition as a building where items of interest are both ‘stored’ and ‘exhibited’. Most people are unaware that the proportion of items ‘stored’ far exceeds what is ‘displayed’ by at least four to one. Tucked away behind the scenes in storage facilities is a vast array of items that you can have access to with prior permission, but most of the time they are in too delicate a condition to be seen or accessed by the public. Some await restoration or conservation and others are waiting to be catalogued. Sturdier items can become part of an object handling exercise under the careful supervision of a member of the museum staff even if they are thousands of years old. However, do not expect museum curators to advise you though as they are usually far too busy and have academic responsibilities directed at high-level research. Many take sabbaticals which means they are away from a telephone or out of email contact anyway. Instead look to museum staff, as they will always be there to help. After all, museum collections are for the benefit of the public and they play a key role in education. We have a right to these collections, provided we ask nicely of course and are reasonable in what we expect in terms of access. And if you want to photograph anything on an individual basis, expect to sign a disclaimer saying that the photograph will not be used for commercial purposes. Most items come under copyright and in some galleries photography is strictly forbidden. Damage to items from flash photography and bright light is a very real concern. Taking any kind of electronic equipment on a visit needs to be cleared first in fact.

Not all items ‘displayed’ are part of the permanent collections either. On one occasion I was frustrated to find that the Throne of Weapons, usually on display at the British Museum and part of work I was doing with some trainee teachers on attitudes to war and peace, had been removed so that it could be given out on loan to a travelling exhibition. At other times items are taken away for restoration or returned to their owners who had only given them as a temporary loan. It pays to check before going to make absolutely sure the items you are going to see are on display. And if an item is extremely popular you will of course have lots of other admiring people looking at it so think carefully about how to view it and when.

There never has been a better time than now. Museums are more open and willing to accommodate your needs as an RE teacher, whether it is to see what is on ‘display’ or what is ‘stored’, so why not take the plunge?

Dr Jim Robinson

Dr Jim Robinson is currently researching sacred objects in the collections of major UK museums and working with their education departments to think about how these can be used to create stimulating resources for RE.