Activity 8: Where can I...?

Level

Middle and Upper Primary

Lesson overview

This lesson requires students to look closely at The Really Big Beliefs Project and use it as the basis of exploring religious beliefs in their own communities.

Main learning outcomes

English
Society and Environment
Mathematics

Materials required

Computers with Internet access
The Really Big Beliefs Project book

Procedure

After reading The Really Big Beliefs Project , ask students to organise themselves into groups based on the religion they found most interesting in the book, and would like to find out more about. There should be one group for each religion. One group should also represent Mr Valensky and atheists.
Each group needs to imagine they are followers of that religion or belief system.
Groups write a list of all the things they need to follow their religion or beliefs, for example, a rosary, mosque, kosher food, art gallery, etc. They need to consider things for: public worship, private prayer, daily rituals, festivals and holy days, dress, etc. Students need to be specific as well. Simply saying ‘church' is not specific enough, as they will need to give a denomination as well.
Students should use the internet and other resources to find out where they can find all these things locally, or as close as possible to them. This may require some preliminary work from the teacher to create a shortlist of relevant sites, for example, local council site and local church sites. Alternatively, this could be a search challenge for students.
Using different coloured pins and post-its, students should mark their findings on a large map of your local area. Anything not available in the local area should be stuck on the perimeter with arrows.
Use this information as the basis of a class discussion and further study. Which religions or beliefs have all the necessary requirements close by? Why is this so? Which religions would have to travel furthest to worship? How many people do you think there are in our community practising each of these religions? How could we find out? How could we represent this with a graph?