Finding Out About World Religions

 Reminders for next week:

Monday - Swimming

Tuesday - Skating/ Science Museum field trip (all day)

Friday - Christmas Celebration/ Last Day of School for 2021/ Half-day (1pm finish)

This week we really started to find out about six of the different religions in the world. 

After a lesson on Shintoism, where Mr. Brabant demonstrated how to find specific information on a couple of the websites that were shared with the class, the students then set out on doing some research. A skill that we focussed on was dividing up the work so that everyone would be responsible for their own fair share. 

To approach the task, students made 3 "Home Groups" with 5 classmates, then each member chose one of the 5 remaining religions (Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and Judaism). Students then met in groups of 3 with the other members to research their chosen religion. To organize and give them focus for their research each group needed to find some of the key facts of their religion (founder, main beliefs, gods/ deities, sacred text, place of worship, major festivals, symbols, and what the followers are called). This information was to be sorted in a chart and each member was responsible for finding out two or three of the facts. Those who found the information quickly could also look for other information so that they could help, or double-check their and their groupmates' work. 

Next week, students will return to their home groups and will be responsible for sharing the key facts about their religion with the rest of their home group members.

In math, we continued working on multiplication strategies and even came up with our own strategies to help count the number of dots on a random bunch on dice. Instead of counting the dots individually, the students discovered that it is much easier to group them by the number on the face and then count how many dice there are and then multiply the number of dice by the value on the face of the dice and then add up the total.