Using the Children's Zone

The Children's Zone allows students to browse through a virtual gallery about special books and religious rules. The first page they come to is a selection of six video clips of children talking about their religion. The pupils wrote the speeches themselves without any influence from an adult. The video clips describe the child's feelings and opinions of their faith.

The next stage to this site is to download a plug-in called Macromedia Shockwave. This will take a few minutes, on average 5 to 10 minutes, to install. It is beneficial to the children to have this installed before the class uses the PC and begins to explore the site. For more information about Shockwave and to download the latest version of the plug-in, visit www.macromedia.com (note that if you don't have the latest version, the plug-in should be automatically downloaded or updated the first time you access the gallery page).

Once everything is installed, the children will be able to access the virtual gallery about Special Books

After entering the gallery the pupils will have the opportunity to look at and explore six exhibit cases in the virtual gallery.

Each case has a manuscript from one of the major world faith traditions, a panel text that tells you a bit about the religion and an exhibit label that has more detailed information about the religious text of that faith. The student can zoom into a case and choose one of these options, then try an activity. The activity is based on the manuscript. Some of the activities can be completed whilst online yet some require the pupils to print a set of instructions and make something. It is therefore advisable to have the PC attached to a good printer.

Which key stage is the virtual gallery suitable for?

The Children's Zone covers aspects of religious rules and can help towards a "Special Books" element in a Religious Education Syllabus. It has a cross-curricular theme and all activities are aimed to develop not only the students' R.E. understanding but also their competency in Literacy.

The children will be able to gain information from the panel text, labels, and information about the religious rules of the six major religions represented in the UK. They will also gain understanding about the religion from the video and from undertaking the activities.

Both the video clips and activities provide the students with information about the religions, but they also try to encourage them to learn by thinking about why a religion is important to the people who are a part of that faith. They are then expected to reflect on what can be learnt from the religion.

This section of the Children's Zone is ideal for KS2 and KS3 pupils, however exploring the images, trying the activities with initial support from the class teachers and looking at the video is suitable for KS1.

Research that will help you organise your lesson

As part of the Words Alive! project, the project officer has piloted the activities in the Children's Zone. It was noticed that group work produced a better outcome than individual work. Through discussion the pupils remembered the task, the historical information and wrote more fluently than pupils who worked individually.

We have designed the activities to centre around discussion, they are best suited for groups of no more than three.

Click on the image to go to the activity in the Children's Zone

If you don't have Shockwave

If you don't have the Shockwave plug-in and don't wish to download it for whatever reason, you can still access the additional information sections and activities from the table below.