World Religion Lesson Plan

A world geography teacher wanted to come to the library to give an introduction to world religions.  I created a lesson plan that worked on a rotations.  We had the students stay at tables, and rotated the activities to them.  The first thing I created was a Smore to link all the videos and information the students would need in one place.

Station 1
Students began the station with a handout that shows an image of a human sacrifice.  The handout has a few discussion questions to get students thinking about what is happening and what it made them feel.  Then they read a second handout with more information on sacrifices.  Finally they watched the video.  I had one laptop set up at every table.

Station 2
The next station had students completing an online scavenger hunt.  I listed 10 questions about Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam and sacred places of each religion.  Students could use Google to find the answer and then Google Maps to find the location.  The worksheet they completed had a blank for the questions and then a world map for them to write the number of the correlating location.  One example of a question- The holiest city in Islam, the place where Muhammad was born.

  The map I used.

Station 3

Students watched videos describing the festivals Ramadan, Hanukkah, and Diwali.  As they were watching, the completed a Venn Diagram finding the comparisons and differences between the three.  The videos are located on the smore.

Station 4

Students used this website Common Religious Sign and Symbols to identify three religious symbols.  I cut card stock into squares, and they drew the symbol on one side with marker, and used their pen or pencil to describe the symbol, and what religion it belongs to, on the back.

For the larger classes, I used the iPads.

Station 5 

I used an excerpt from Ki no Tsurayuki's The Tosa Diary for students to analyze.  This is part of a Japanese Haibun.  Haibuns typically are short descriptions of a place, person or object, or a diary of a journey or other series of events in the poet's life.  Students read the haibun and filled in a chart with direct quotes from the poem.

This was a great lesson!  It went really smoothly and students seemed to enjoy it.  I think any lesson that can include visuals for students can catch their attention.  Also, the stations only lasted about 10 minutes each, so they were never on any topic for a long time.  I'm hoping to do more rotating lessons like this soon.