Lesson video

Hey, I'm Miss Kendrick, and welcome to this deliberate practise lesson from our masters of life and death unit.

The whole point of this lesson is to say that we can practise our knowledge of mostly quotations because quotations are something that you're not just going to know from listening to them a few times.

You need to really practise recalling them so that you can recall them accurately and use them in your assessments.

Most exam boards do require you to know some quotations when you're writing your answers.

So what we're going to do in this lesson is we are just going to sit down and practise learning them.

So we'll start with some quickfire questions just to jog your memory on some matters from this unit.

We're going to spend time learning those quotations and then spend some time linking them to beliefs so that we know how to use them when it comes to answering questions.

So in this lesson, we will be recapping beliefs about life and death and the treatment of animals.

We might also be referring to abortion and euthanasia, and that will be in the application of those quotations.

So for some people, this might be a sensitive topic, and if that applies to you, you may want to do the rest of this lesson with a trusted adult nearby who can support.

For this lesson, you will need a pen or a pencil, a different coloured pen or pencil, and that's going to be really important in this lesson when we're learning our quotations, and you're going to need some paper.

And in this case, you're probably going to want some scrappy paper, some paper that you don't mind making lots of mistakes and scribbling on and things like that, because the whole point of this lesson is not that you do your neatest, most beautiful work, but that you go over and over and over these quotations, really learning them and making corrections and things like that.

So at the end of the process, you'll probably have a fairly ratty bit of paper that you've folded lots of times or made lots of corrections on, and that's fine.

That's exactly what I want to see.

When I set students these tasks and they show me their work and it's all beautifully written out, I think you've not done this properly, because this process that we're going to use for learning quotations involves making mistakes and correcting them.

So I know that if someone has got no mistakes on there, they've not done it properly.

So just be ready for that.

But we'll do our quickfire questions first.

So please do either answer me verbally or point to the answer on the screen.

Do not feel too silly doing this.

It's going to be much, much better for your learning if you're really interacting, and I'll feel silly if you're just sitting there watching me go through these questions rather than joining in.

So which word comes from the term good death? Euthanasia.

So the idea of dying with dignity, not having a painful, prolonged death.

Which of the following is testing medications that may save human lives on animals? That's medical testing.

Which of the following is not considered a reason to be a good khalifah? Good, so being a khalifah is not directly part of the five pillars.

I'm sure many Muslims would say it does fit in with the five pillars, but generally it's linked to Muslim beliefs about creation, the idea of being judged, and helping the ummah, as well.

How might beliefs about the afterlife impact Muslim beliefs about euthanasia? Pick the answer that best fits with Islam.

Okay, so we've got Muslims believe you'll be judged on your actions, such as taking an innocent life.

When do Roman Catholics believe that life begins? At conception, so when the egg is first fertilised.

Muslims, Christians, and Humanists will all agree humans have a responsibility to care for the environment.

This is true.

There might be slightly different reasons here.

So for example, Muslims and Christians will believe that the world was created by God and therefore humans have a responsibility over it, whereas Humanists might argue that humans are part of the world, and if we want to pass on a good world to future generations or to have a positive impact on the environment, then we have a responsibility to care for it, as well.

They might say it will bring about the greater good if we work with nature and care for the environment.

Humanism is a religion true or false.

That is false.

So Humanism is more of a philosophy or approach to life, but it is not a religion.

It's not a thought system that's been revealed by God or anything like that.

It is a non-religious approach to life.

And also, not all atheists are Humanists, but Humanists are usually atheists or just non-religious, perhaps.

Fundamentalists interpret the Bible symbolically.

True or false? That is false.

Fundamentalists usually interpret the Bible literally.

Which of the following groups of Christians interpret the Bible in its context, like its historical context? Conservatives.

So they'll tend to look at the translations of words and what the culture was like at the time of the writing of the Bible.

So here I've got six quotations that we're going to make sure we're learning by the end of this lesson.

I've got three from Islam and three from Christianity, and all of them are going to be relevant to this unit.

These are not necessarily the only quotations that you will find useful in this unit.

There are plenty of others, as well, which I would encourage you to learn, but I do think that we need to try not to bite off more than we can chew.

If we try and learn all of the quotations at once, then our brains are just not going to cope and you might end up not learning any of them.

Therefore, it's better to focus on a smaller number of quotations at a time and make sure you really, really know them before you start on any others.

And I would say, actually, six is probably the maximum.

Partly I'm allowing six because two of them are very short quotations here.

If that was a long quotation, maybe I'd say we'd have to cap it at five.

So we're going to just talk through these quotations now and give you a recap of them and what they mean.

And then you're going to learn them using a process called look, cover- Well, it's not so much look, cover, write, check, repeat.

It's going to be filling in gaps.

But what you need to be doing is filling in those gaps from memory and not just copying out your previous answers.

I'll explain a bit more about it in a moment.

So, first quotation.

"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." This quotation's from Christianity and it is the first sentence in the Bible.

And this shows the Christian belief that the world is created by God.

And the second quotation is similar in content and similar in its meaning, but this one's from the Qur'an.

"Indeed, your Lord is Allah, who created the heavens and earth, and he created the sun, the moon, and the stars." Now, both Muslims and Christians believe that God created the world, that he created the universe from nothing, but what you need to make sure you know is the difference between these quotations, which one comes from Islam and which one comes from Christianity, because you can't use the Christian one for Islam, for example, because that would just be a wrong approach.

So we've got two quotations here, both focused on creation, and you could link that to being a good steward and things like that, because the world belongs to God.

Third quotation is, "Let us make man in our image." Do you know which religion that comes from? There is a bit of a clue in the reference there.

So that is from Christianity.

That is also part of the creation story.

And this links to beliefs about sanctity of life, the idea that human life is more important than animal life, that it is special, created by God, and should not be destroyed.

That links to the next quotation, as well, "Do not commit murder," which comes from the 10 commandments.

So again, many Christians would apply these quotations to issues like abortion and euthanasia, or they might say that, with especially "let us make man in our image," they might apply that to medical testing on animals and say that it's acceptable because human life is more important than animal life.

Next quotation's from Islam.

"Do not kill your children for fear of poverty.

We provide for them and for you." So this is a teaching against abortion that many Muslims would use to say that, well, someone shouldn't be worried that they won't be able to afford to raise a child and provide for them because Allah will provide.

And many Muslims would also say that the ummah should help a family care for their children, as well.

And finally, "It is not possible for one to die except by permission of Allah at a decree determined." So this is the idea that human life should not be taken, that only Allah is allowed to decide when somebody dies or gives permission.

When we talk about a decree determined, we could make links to capital punishment there and say that is the one circumstance, that and abortion when the mother's life is at risk, in which a life can be taken.

So many Muslims would use this against euthanasia.

So we've done our recap.

Let's just have a look at the task I'm going to get you to do.

So you can see here you've got all those quotations, and you have some missing words.

And when you start doing this task, you will have a keywords box to help you fill in those gaps.

You need to copy out these quotations in full.

Do you not just decide where the keywords should go, because writing them out is part of that process of learning them.

Once you've done this part, you will do the same thing again, but this time you will not have the keywords box and you will need to fill in those blanks from memory.

When you do that, you need to make sure you cover up your first version.

You should not just be copying it.

If you just copy it out, you will be wasting your time because you will not learn the quotations as well as you will if you really, really think hard about what words are missing.

Obviously if you get really, really stuck, you can leave that part for now, and then when you check your answers, you add in what's missing and maybe spend some time going over that quotation.

You could say it out loud to yourself or just go over it in your head lots of times.

You might try and think of a memory link or something like that to help you to learn it.

Then you will repeat the process, but more words will be taken away and you will have more gaps to fill.

So again, cover up what you've done and where you've made corrections, write it out again, until the last time you will just have the first couple of words from each quotation and you'll need to write out the whole thing.

If you want to, once you've gotten to that point, you could try and write them out completely from scratch without even those prompts.

And I promise you, it is possible.

I get my students to do cover, write, check, repeat for homework all the time.

And the first lesson after their homework, I always say turn to the back of your books and write up the quotations you learned for homework, and they usually know them really well, especially when I can see the evidence of their homework.

So this is all about training our brains and practising.

And at the end of this lesson, hopefully you'll be really confident using these quotations and you'll be very proud of yourself.

So I'm going to stop talking now and you can start on the task.

I hope you got on okay with that task.

Now, one thing we're going to do before we start looking at the meaning of those quotations is make sure we know what religion the quotation is from.

It's really important you don't get them mixed up.

When you're exams are being marked, the examiner will know.

I can always spot straight away if a quotation is from the wrong religion or if it's made up, as well.

Never assume you can get away with making up quotations.

We are in a world in which there is Google and the teacher can just type in whatever quotation you've made up and very quickly discover that it doesn't exist, all right? So it's always better to know your stuff.

So just answer these questions quickly.

Is this quotation from Christianity or Islam? "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." That is from Christianity.

Notice I've taken off the references here just because I don't want them to give you a clue, 'cause obviously the ones that say Qur'an are from Islam, the ones that say Genesis or something like that, you should be able to tell are from Christianity, as well.

So that's why I've taken away the references here.

"Indeed, your Lord is Allah, who created the heavens and earth, and he created the sun, the moon, and the stars." Islam or Christianity? That's Islam.

The clue is that it does say Allah in quotation, but trust me, I've definitely read students write down quotations like that and attributing them to Christianity.

So we've always got to make sure we know our stuff.

"Let us make man in our image." Christianity or Islam? That is Christianity.

So Muslims do not believe that Adam and Eve were made in God's image.

"Do not commit murder." Islam or Christianity? That is from Christianity, although Muslims will agree.

"Do not kill your children for fear of poverty.

We provide for them and for you." Islam or Christianity? That one is from Islam.

"And it is not possible for one to die except by permission of Allah at a decree determined." Islam or Christianity? That one is from Islam.

We're doing a couple more over again, just in case you got them wrong so you can get them right this time.

"Do not kill your children for fear of poverty.

We provide for them and for you." Islam or Christianity? That is Islam.

"Let us make man in our image." Christianity.

"In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth." That is Christianity.

"Let us make man in our image." Christianity.

I'm doing this one a lot because it's a difference, whereas lots of the other ones, Muslims and Christians are going to agree, even if they've got different quotations to support those beliefs.

And we'll look at the meaning of quotations now.

So I'm going to just go through a quick explanation of the meaning of each quotation, and then you're going to pause the video and you're going to write out the quotation again.

Lots of repetition in this lesson.

And then you're going to write a quick explanation of what topics it links to.

We're not covering every single thing that these quotations can link to, 'cause there's a huge amount of things, but we're focusing on topics from within this unit that we can talk about.

So, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." This quotation links to Christian beliefs about the origins of the universe.

And we looked at the different Christian interpretations of the creation story.

So Fundamentalist Christians will interpret it literally and believe that God created the world in six days.

Conservative Christians will believe that the word "yom" can be translated as "day" or "period of time." I've not included there liberal views that it's completely symbolic.

You can talk about loads of other things here, as well.

You could talk about stewardship of the environment, as well.

But we're going for just a couple of things for now.

So on the next slide, you can pause your video and write your own explanation of this quotation.

And like I said, write it out again and write your explanation underneath.

Next quotation.

"Indeed, your Lord is Allah, who created the heavens and the earth, and he created the sun, the moon, and the stars." So this quotation links to Islamic beliefs about creation.

Verses about creation are scattered through the Qur'an rather than there being one creation narrative like in the Bible.

Many Muslims believe that they fit with scientific views like the big bang theory, as the Qur'an describes the universe being in smoke at one time, which is like a poetic description of the big bang.

So I've added in a bit extra knowledge here, and I did for the previous quotation, as well, 'cause you want to know all the different things it can link to and support.

So again, pause the video and write out the quotation and write a brief explanation of how it links to some of these beliefs.

Next quotation.

"Let us make man in our image." So this quotation links to treatment of animals, euthanasia, and abortion.

It's part of the Christian belief in the sanctity of life, that human life is valuable.

This means it's more important than animal life and that innocent human life shouldn't be taken.

So again, a huge amount of things linked to this quotation.

It's a nice quick quotation to learn.

Pause the video, write it out, and explain what it means and what it links to.

"Do not commit murder." Another quick, straightforward quotation, and again from Christianity.

This links to beliefs about abortion and euthanasia.

They may argue that it is not ethical to take a life, even if it seems as though taking that life may reduce suffering or be more loving.

For many Christians, this is a rule that's relevant to all times, situations, and cultures.

So this will be more linked to sanctity of life than situation ethics.

For example, many Christians would argue that situation ethics, where it claims it would be right to let someone die because it's more loving, they might argue, but the Bible says do not murder, and that stands in every situation.

So again, pause your video and write an explanation of this quotation.

So next quotation from Islam.

"Do not kill your children for fear of poverty.

We provide for them and for you." So this links more specifically to Islamic beliefs about abortion.

It can't be used in quite as many different ways as some of the other quotations we've looked at.

But it does link to beliefs about Allah providing for all Muslims and things like that.

Muslims are usually against abortion, as they believe they should trust Allah to provide for the parents and child.

However, they will allow abortion when it is the lesser of two evils, if the mother's life is at risk.

So I've gotten in there that exception to this rule.

So again, pause your video and write out your explanation.

Finally, we've gotten to our last quotation.

We're almost there.

Well done for all of your hard work.

"And it is not possible for one to die except by permission of Allah at a decree determined." This quotation links to Islamic views on euthanasia and abortion.

Sunni Muslims believe that Allah has predestined the time of a person's death and that euthanasia goes against this plan.

Muslims who believe Allah predestined them to make their own choices, such as Shi'as, would argue that only Allah has the right to take a life.

Because remember in Islam, we've got different views on predestination, but even if there's more of a focus on free choices and free will, those Muslims would still argue that Islam would say it's wrong to take an innocent life.

So, final quotation, write it out and write down your explanation.

Well done for all of your hard work in this lesson.

I hope you feel really confident in those quotations now and like you know them really well.

Do not hesitate to do it with other quotations, as well.

If you've got a bank of quotations, for example, that you know you'll use in these units, then you can do exactly the same process by yourself.

You don't need me to set it up for you.

You could just do look cover, write, check, repeat.

It's always going to be really, really helpful, and make sure you regularly check back to those quotations, as well.

The ones we've done in this lesson, I would advise you to have another look at them tomorrow and then give it a few more days and have another look, as well.

Because if you do that and just spend five minutes on recapping them, then you're much more likely to remember them long-term, 'cause that's just how our brains work.

Thank you again for all of your hard work in this lesson and in this unit.

You can now go and do the exit quiz.