Ideas for all-singing, all-dancing amazing lesson on the Bible for inspection

[LaBelleDameSansPatience]

Just that, really. Has anyone got any ideas? I will be doing a new topic on the bible to year 4 and will be inspected in the second week. I am feeling the pressure to produce something amazing. Sometimes my lessons are amazing ... usually they are good and just occasionally they fail completely.
Really stressed about this and need ideas to incorporate. SOW not written yet; that is on my to-do list (along with a hundred other things for this inspection).

[midnightmoomoo]

What's the emphasis? When I taught holy books I used to play Chinese whispers with the class, divided into two big groups stood in a circle, and send round a reasonably tricky message....it was really good to get them to understand how a message can change if it's not written down.

Also think about how the messages in the bible are given eg poetry/imagery so you can link to literacy.

Sorry, my brain won't function, it's a bit late to be much use!
Good luck!

[LaBelleDameSansPatience]

I like the Chinese whispers idea .... I don't really know what the emphasis will be as I haven't had time to write the unit of work yet and I am waiting for a book ...
I have an inspection next week and need to produce a REALLY good creative imaginative lesson which moves the children on etc etc.
Don't know whether to go with the class studying the bible or the class that is looking at Pilgrims Progress and will be thinking about what heaven might be like. Lots of scope for artwork, music, literacy, and stuff there, I feel ... just need a focus and am in too much of a tizz to sort anything in my head ...

[Spottybra]

Brainstorm what your clas already knows, then use parts of the bible they don't. Not sure what's on the curriculum but I've always preferred the Old Testament. The lineage from Adam to Jesus is interesting and myth worthy.

[Spottybra]

There was some suggestion that the forbidden fruit wasn't an apple either.

[thegreenheartofmanyroundabouts]

If you don't mind some ideas from someone who is a Christian and does the contextualisation stuff when children visit the church for RE.......

If you start with the idea that the Bible is a library then you can look at genre. What is it? What sorts of books are contained in the Bible? What sorts of writing to we know today? How do we use it? Then you can start looking at how meaning and truth is contained in different types of literature (can poetry and myth contain truth?) and how different Christian groups use the Bible.

For visuals - when I get school visits on a theme of the Bible I make up a library by covering books in brown paper and write the name of the book on the outside but tailor the inside for the genre of the book. So for the book of Genesis I get a children's books of Noah (2 versions if I'm being really picky) and some of the other mythic stories and put them in one package, then for Leviticus and Deuteronomy I cover computer manuals for rules, for the psalms I cover poetry, for proverbs child care manuals. For the history of the OT I find old history books to cover. For the New Testament I do the letters of Paul as emails or letters. The gospels are harder as for some Christians they are reportage and for others they are not. You could cover four books on the same historical figure to get the idea that different people have a different perspective on the same person. The book of Revelation I use a graphic novel.

Another visual is a time line. So King David is about 1000 years BC. Jesus was born 3BC and dies 30AD. You can look at when the various books were written and rewritten and how context affects content.

If you do the Chinese Whispers exercise it is interesting but you would need to make the point that for people who didn't read then they would be much better at remembering stories. You could do something different which is to get children to try and remember lists of rules or to make up stories that contain a moral and see which one is remembered more accurately as that gives some insight into why the Bible is mostly narrative and not a list of rules.

[LaBelleDameSansPatience]

Wow! Amazing ideas! I was thinking of covering boxes in brown paper for the books of the bible, but the idea of the different books is so much better!
Have never looked at the lineage of Jesus ... must do that ...