7M1

Today we looked at the Second Pillar of Islam, “Salah”. This is the requirement for Muslims to pray 5 times a day. We were introduced to 5 key words:

• Adhan - the call to prayer we saw on the whiteboard
• Mu’adhin - the person who sings the call to prayer (adhan)
• Salah - the second pillar
• Rakah - an individual unit of prayer
• Wudu - the ritual wash Muslims have before prayer

Homework:

Your homework was to think of something you could do 5 times a day and then do it before school, at morning break, lunchtime, after school, and in the evening. Once you’ve done it, write a paragraph explaining what you did and how easy or hard you found it.

Today we started looking at the Five Pillars of Islam, starting with Shahadah. We learned that this is the first thing spoken to new babies, used 5 times a day in the Muslim call to prayer, and Muslims try to make it the last thing they say before they die.

The words are: “ašhadu al lā ilāha illa l-Lāh, wa ašhadu anna muammadar rasūlu l-Lāh” which means
“There is no god but God, Muhammad is the Messenger of God”.

We also heard the story of Muhammed (PBUH).

Homework (due next week) was to write a brief summary of his life and the starting of Islam. Try to find out some interesting information about his life!

For information try:

• Wikipedia
• cist.org.uk
• Jamaat.org (quite detailed)
• IslamAwareness.net (again quite detailed)

We’ve finished looking at Hindu samskaras (rites of passage) now so it’s time to do some homework.

This will be assessed and how well you do will affect the number of raffle tickets you get. The harder you work, the more tickets you get, the more chance you have of winning a prize!

What you need to do is create me a piece of work about the Hindu samskaras we’ve looked at. You must talk about at least three samskaras in this piece of work, it’s up to you which ones you choose. Of course you can do more if you like! It’s also up to you how you present your work. It could be a:

• Booklet
• PowerPoint presentation
• Poster
• Essay
• Something else!

Whatever it is, you must bring it to class on the 30th March.

Please use the information on this site to help you with this homework.

Hints on how to do well!

• Level 4: Describe is the key word. To do this you need to say what Hindu people do in their rites of passage. Most of you do this every week so I expect all of you to be able to do this no problem!
• Level 5: To do level 5 you need to explain. This is asking the why questions that I talk about so much. It’s all about not only saying what happens, but talking about why Hindus do it. Talk about dharma, karma and reincarnation to start working at level 5. I’m sure everyone in this class is capable of level 5 if they apply themselves. Prove me right!
• Level 6: This is where it starts getting tricky. Level 6 requires evaluation, this means looking at themes, suitable ones here would be dharma, karma and perhaps diversity (how different people do different things). For each samskara think about how your theme relates to the samskara. For example, can you explain how each samskara shows a Hindu’s dharma? It’ll help if you say from the beginning what your themes might be. This is quite a hard one to explain but feel free to try, if you don’t quite get there you’ll definitely reach level 5. If you have questions then you can leave a comment and I’ll try to get back to you…

Good luck!

Today we finished looking at Hindu samskaras (rites of passage) by looking at funeral ceremonies.

We thought about the idea of reincarnation (being reborn as something else) and how the ideas of dharma and karma affect how someone is reborn.

The Notebook presentation is here.

You can find more information on Hindu funerals here, here or here.

This morning we looked at the different ways Hindus might get married. Hinduism is a way of life, not just a religion and so every wedding is slightly different. You looked at various different things a Hindu couple might do at their wedding: Hindu wedding rituals.

You can find more information on Wikipedia, BBC Religion or EduWeb.

After having looked at Hindu Rites of Passage for a while we spent today looking at the Hindu concept of “Dharma”. We started off considering foreign words that are used in English (like “corgi” which is Welsh meaning “little dog”, or “doolally” which comes from an Indian town of a similar name in which English army officers were said to go crazy).

Then we looked at “dharma” in more detail, and explored the concept of “duty”. This involved looking at the Dharma of policemen, worms, dogs and trees. We also thought about how these things work together. You drew your own pictures of living things and identified their dharma.

Finally, we compared Obama Dharma and Farmer Dharma.

Notebook presentation

We did a little quiz on Samskaras. You can try it again here.

Learning objective: To find out about the Hindu “Sacred Thread” ceremony.

Today we were looking at the Hindu initiation ceremony called the “Sacred Thread” ceremony (or Upanayana). We thought about what happens and the symbolic things that they do to represent the person’s second “spiritual” birth when they get a new spiritual father (or Guru) and take the Vedas (Hindu holy book) as their spiritual mother.

The Notebook presentation is here. Or, for more information try Wikipedia or Heart of Hinduism.

Homework was to talk to a married couple you know and ask them what they think marriage is all about. What do they think makes a good marriage? Write down their answer and bring it next lesson.

Today we look at Hindu rites of passage called Samskaras, in paricular we looked at 3 called Garbhadhana, Jatakarma and Annaprashana. (Look here for more information).

We created some pages exploring the meaning of these three ceremonies. I’ve taken the best from each:

• Garbhadhana
• Jatakarma
• Annaprashana