Year 8 RE at STM

This week you will be working on your Unit Assessment. The topic for this is “the Ten Commandments”. Use your homework time this week to revise for the assessment, and add to your written work for your assessment.

This week the homework is about the Passover. I want you to research this topic, and find out as much as you can about how Jewish people celebrate the Passover today, and why it is important.

Don’t just bring me print outs of Wiki!! Read through some information, and choose what you think are the most important points. Add your own opinion – would you like to celebrate the Passover with a Jewish person? Why, or why not?

And, since everyone else will also be researching the Passover for Thursday 26 November – write five questions to see if others have found out as much as you!

Last week you learnt about God’s covenant with Abraham, and Abraham’s relationship with his son, Isaac. This week you will be learning about Moses and the plagues. We have been thinking about people who were asked to do very difficult things by God. So … what would you do if God asked you to do a very difficult thing?

You can ask your family and friends as well. Then write a paragraph beginning, “If God asked me to do a very difficult thing, I would … ”

Here are some examples below of what the Bible has described God asking people to do:

* Leave your family and travel far away from home, without knowing exactly where you are going.
* Persuade a world leader to change their mind on a topic, even though you are very nervous, and not very good, at public speaking, and you could risk being thrown in jail.
* Do something that makes other people think you are mad, for example building a boat in a place far from the sea.
* Sacrifice your only child. This might not necessarily mean killing them, as it did for Abraham.
* Give all your money to the poor.

You could choose one of these examples – what would you do if God asked you to do one of these? What would your parents do? What would your friends do?

Here is an animation of Abraham and Isaac:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UabYjhhzG4Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fW8Oy3_OSA

I will see if I can add more later!

Last week you learnt about God’s first covenant with the world, the promise he made to Noah. For Thursday 12 November, write a song, poem or rap about Noah, the flood, and the promise God made, that he would never again destroy the world by flood.

You must have at least ten lines in your poem.
You should include the words: flood, ark, rainbow, promise, hope, dove, remind/reminder/remember
You could decorate your piece for display.

Our new topic is “Covenant”, which means promise. We will begin a title page in class; your homework will be to finish it, beautifully decorated in colour.

You should add words and pictures related to the topic, and you could also include the Aims of the unit, which I will add below.

1) What is a covenant?
2) What was God’s covenant with Noah?
3) What was God’s covenant with Abraham?
4) How does the story of Abraham and Isaac look towards the story of Jesus and the Eucharist?
5) What was God’s covenant with Moses?
6) Why is the Passover important to Jews?
7) How does the Passover look towards the story of Jesus and the Eucharist?
Are the Ten Commandments still relevant to us today?
9) In what way is Jesus the New Covenant?

Hopefully reading through these Aims has already given you plenty of ideas for the images and words that you can include in your title page!