Asia Education Foundation

Activity 1: Believe it or not?

Level

Middle and Upper Primary

Lesson overview

Students develop an understanding of the meaning of the word ‘belief', a key concept for engagement with the text. Anticipation is created for reading The Really Big Beliefs Project . Foundations are laid for the values underpinning study, for example, that individuals have different beliefs and that respect for this is desirable.

Main learning outcomes

English
Society and Environment

Materials required

Whiteboard
The Really Big Beliefs Project book

Procedure

  1. Write the word ‘Belief’ on the board.

  2. Ask students to suggest some beliefs. You could use the concept from the book of ‘answers to the really big questions in life’ (for example, what happens to us when we die?) as forming beliefs. Two or three will be sufficient to get started.

  3. Ask ‘What is a belief?’ Working with the students’ suggestions, develop a class definition of the word ‘belief’. Write students’ ideas on the board. Your definition might include ideas such as:

    • A belief is an idea.

    • A belief is something in my head.

    • A belief is something I believe in.

    • A belief is something I think is true.

    • A belief is something important to me.

    • A belief is something I might not necessarily be able to prove.

    • A belief is something that guides how I act.

    • A belief might be something that other people in my family or religion share.

    • A belief is something that might be different from what other people believe.

    Useful questions to elicit definitions include, for example:

    • ‘Can you touch a belief?’

    • ‘Where do beliefs come from?’
    • ‘Where do your beliefs live?’

  4. Now students have a definition, ask them to work in small groups to suggest more beliefs (not necessarily things they believe in themselves). One person in each group should write down the suggestions and another should report a couple of ideas back to the class. Test each suggestion out against some of the definition points before writing it on the board, and seek class agreement before writing it up. Opportunities may arise to discuss the difference between facts, opinions and beliefs. For example, students might suggest things as varied as ‘Icecream is cold’, ‘Keira Knightley is beautiful’, ‘Animals feel pain like humans do’ or ‘People are reincarnated after they die’.

  5. Ask students to draw up three columns as follows:

     

    I believeI believe … butI don't believe
       
  1. Ask students to work individually to write some beliefs from the board in the appropriate columns. Before starting, explain that students will not have to share all their answers.
    Discuss how some beliefs are special and private. This provides an opportunity for eliciting from students the need to respect other people's beliefs. Refer back to the definitions and the notion that beliefs are very important to people, and part of them. Also note that different people have different beliefs and that beliefs are complicated: people might not be quite sure about beliefs and they can change.

  2. Students, if they wish, should share one belief from their table (and why they have put it in a particular column) with a partner.

  3. Ask students to work in small groups, each pair joining with another pair, to organise the beliefs on the board into groups and name these groups. Do any beliefs belong together?
    Students should share their groups with the rest of the class. ‘Religious beliefs' will be suggested, or elicited if necessary. This may even be broken down further by students, to ‘Christian beliefs’ or ‘Muslim beliefs’.

  4. Discuss with students how religious beliefs form the basis of different religions. Also note that not believing in any particular religion is a belief system in its own right, thereby introducing the concept of belief systems. Show students the cover of The Really Big Beliefs Project book and ask them to suggest some religions or ideas that might be covered in the book.

  5. For homework, students should try some of the suggested beliefs from the board on their families, and see which ones they share. They should also reflect on the ideas discussed in the lesson and add some of their own beliefs/ideas to the table.