Lesson Plan - Faith & Art

Curriculum Focus: R.E.
Taken from: How do people express their faith through the arts?
QCA Unit 6F : Theme 3 Music
Year Group: 6		 Getting ready to learn:
As pupils enter the room, teacher greets each child asking them to enter, calmly and quietly sit where they are comfortable and listen to the music.

Connect to previous learning: What do I already know? What do I want to know?

What has been the theme of the music played as they entered the classroom during the last 2 days? When might your hear this kind of music, where might you hear it and why is it played?
Discuss with the person next to you for 3 minutes, share ideas.

The Big Picture: What will I be finding out or learning about?

Explain that this lesson is part of the unit that we have been exploring about how Christians express their faith through the arts during the festival of Christmas

Learning intentions: to know, to be able to do, to understand

To understand and experience how Christmas music and songs are a way of expressing Christian faith and worship

Achievable steps: What are we going to do? How are we going to do it?

Think about a variety of Christmas songs and music. Listen to 2 pieces to compare and contrast them in terms of the feelings and emotions we experience. (Ding Dong Merrily on High & Mary’s Boy Child)
Express our feelings by painting as picture as we listen
Explore and communicate our own understanding about how Christians use religious songs and music to express their faith and to worship at Christmastime – give the children a hint at some of the possibilities!

Teacher input: engaging the learner and encouraging thinking through visual, auditory and kinaesthetic cues

ENCOUNTER

Discuss the songs that they have heard on entering the classroom, name known songs and sort into religious and non-religious groups asking children to write names of songs on card and fix onto wall under the appropriate heading.
Listen to 2 selected, contrasting, Christmas religious songs. Give children a copy of the song words. Ask children to share ideas, in pairs, using these questions: What are the songs about? Why might they be important to Christians? How might they form part of Christian worship?
Listen to one of the songs again and focus on the feelings and emotions that they experience as they listen. Write words on the page of song words. Discuss range of feelings experienced.
Choose one of the songs to listen to again, this time paint a picture linked to feelings and emotions. (each child has a piece of paper, chooses 2 colours from green red or purple, squirt blobs of chosen acrylic paint onto a small palette and uses a strip of stiff card to paint with)
Encourage children to walk around and look at the paintings and invite volunteers to discuss their pieces in terms of feelings and emotions experienced while listening.
Reflect on the feelings experienced by Christians as they use Christmas songs in their worship.

RESPONSE

Main activity: children explore the learning and establish meaning through activities which take account of multiple intelligences.

Prompt: Explore your own ideas about how Christians might use Christmas music to express their faith and worship
Suggested ideas for exploring using multiple intelligences:
Musical: Create own music to tell of messages about Christmas
Verbal/linguistic: Create lyrics, verses and repeated themes, choral speaking using voice to make music
Bodily/kinaesthetic: mime and gesture to music and song lyrics
Mathematical/ logical: produce a flowchart of events from song lyrics, look for patterns, repetitions, conduct a survey of most popular religious Christmas songs
Natural: Examine Christmas song lyrics for references to the natural world
Interpersonal: will you work in a small group or with another person?
Intrapersonal: do you prefer to work alone?

RESOURCES AVAILABLE: paper, crayons, watercolours, instruments, computer, carol booklets

Show you know: practise, rehearse and memorise key points. What have I learned?

Children show their finished work and explain how their activities have helped them to learn

Reflection: How did I learn? What do I need to know next?

Spend 2 minutes explaining what they have discovered to an ‘ideas partner’, then swap over. Begin the explanation with ‘I understand how Christians might use songs and music to express their faith…’