CCI: Journey Through Lent - Notes for teachers

Key traditions and events as well as Christian teachings are explored in this unit of work relating to Lent.

The ideas have been broken down into clear sections and older children can look at these and explore the associated links independently.

Younger children will benefit from illustrations taken from simplified Bible texts, there are also opportunities to use practical activities and artefacts to support their understanding in this area of learning.

The links to associated websites within sections of the project are occasionally aimed at teachers rather than children. Older students will benefit from seeing a range of images and texts relating to Lent and a decision might jointly be made about whether to read an entire article or an indicated part of it. Many of the links to websites have been found using theREsite (now incorporated into www.REonline.org.uk. Pupils/students and teachers, may like to try and find other relevant materials either on the Internet or from your school's own resources.

Planning Work

Teachers planning work on a theme of Lent can use the time for the following:

provide pupils/students with the opportunity to show their knowledge and understanding of an important time in Jesus' life and in the Christian calendar;
link the custom to stories and beliefs associated with it;
increase pupils/students understanding of a key stage in the development of the Christian life;
develop a greater understanding of who Christians believe Jesus to be and show some understanding of his main teaching/message.

Navigating around the site

The site is in two parts, for teachers and pupils. This page is the start of the teachers' part. It contains notes for every section of the Journey through Lent. The 'boxed' parts indicate pupil activities. Where appropriate, these are available on separate pages for pupils to use: you can jump directly to the each pupils' page from the relevant teachers' notes.

When directing pupils to the site, encourage them to use the ten links beside the picture on the Lent Home Page - these lead directly to the pupils' pages, and bypass the teachers' notes.

The activity pages mainly cover KS2 and KS3. We have not included activity pages for KS1 pupils - we presume they will need a level of personal guidance which can't be given remotely.

There are also limitations about how much work we might expect younger pupils to do working from Internet sites so the work suggestions are embedded in the text for each of the listed sections