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This PowerPoint sequence supports the idea for a piece of work about British values for a large school population from REtoday, September This download resource, free to REtoday magazine subscribers and NATRE members, is copyright ©RE Today Services 2015 and may be used in your own school. Any other use is by written permission.
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British values and RE
Every school is concerned to meet Inspection requirements, and the new requirements to actively promote British values.
This is not just a set of requirements for RE: it’s a whole-school responsibility.
But RE has a decades-long track record of enabling pupils to learn more about living together in a diverse world, and about tolerance and respect.
This exemplary activity provides some good lessons through which British values can be explored by hundreds of pupils.
Lauren Smillie ran the activity with year-olds.
Make it flexible for your younger or older pupils.
Take a look at the photo on the next slide first.
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Lauren told her pupils about tolerance, mutual respect, the rule of law, democracy and individual liberty.
She gave all her pupils a piece of torn red card, and asked them to write onto the card a few words and a logo or image that showed what makes them a unique person.
She gave all her pupils a piece of torn blue card, and asked them to put on this card a few words and a logo or image of something that makes them proud of Britain.
A small group of students from the many different ethnic groups in the school put together all these folded cards to make the Union flag you see here.
This way of approaching the British values, far from telling pupils what to think about this, asks them to think about British-ness, in terms of values.
The ‘Flag’ then enables P4C sessions for each class, with the Union flag, containing 360 pieces of collective wisdom, as a stimulus.
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Can you create a Union flag for all your pupils?
Get every pupil to contribute both a blue and a red piece to the mosaic. On the blue, they write something unique to themselves: what makes me a special human being? On the red card they write something that links us all together in Britain. Avoiding repetition is good, but doesn’t matter too much. They should each contribute two thoughts. The cards are folded, so that they can be opened and read when arranged onto the flag and stuck down. A good teamwork activity might be for a small group of senior students to put the image together. How should it be publicised beyond the school? What happens next matters: pick up on Lauren’s ideas about P4C, further discussion, links with Citizenship and more. See the next slide for six versions of the ‘Golden Rule’ from sources as diverse as RE itself.
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6. iv) Let your aims be common and your hearts united,
i) A man once asked the Prophet Muhammad what was the best thing is Islam, and he replied, “It is to feed the hungry and to give the greeting of peace both to those you know and to those you do not know.”
Islam: Hadith of Bukhari
ii) Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength. Love your neighbour as you love yourself.
Judaism and Christianity: Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18
iii) Whenever you see someone else hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and you look after them, you look after me, said Jesus.
Christianity: Matthew 25:31-46
iv) Let your aims be common
and your hearts united,
and all of you be of one mind,
so you may live well together.
Hinduism: Rig Veda
v) The only possible basis for a sound morality is mutual tolerance and respect: tolerance of one another’s customs and opinions; respect for one another’s rights and feelings; awareness of one another’s needs. Non-religious: A J Ayer, The Humanist Outlook
vi) There is no greater penance than patience, no greater happiness than contentment, no greater evil than greed, no greater virtue than mercy, and no more potent weapon than forgiveness.
Sikhism: Guru Amardas
You may want to print and copy these for each group.
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7. Variations and additions:
Ask older students to collage a world out of green and blue card:
A green piece shows [one for each student] what makes me proud to be a citizen of the world
A blue piece shows what I intend to do to make the world a better place in my lifetime
Read Revelation 21, a text which pictures the world perfected. What could make this happen?
Ask pupils to create work of art that shows one of their values creatively.
The next two slides show Eleanor’s expression of the value of open mindedness. Many more at
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8. Eleanor, 12, Stretford Grammar School
Enlightenment
“What I am attempting to show by this piece of artwork is that to be open-minded you need to be willing to see other people’s point of view. I imagined it being like people standing round in a circle, all looking at the same object but seeing it from a different perspective. It is like seeing the same situation from lots of different viewpoints. The thing that they’re looking at doesn’t change, it’s people’s opinions on it that differentiate from each other.
If you have an open mind you’re described as being enlightened. You have an open mind whereas a closed mind is like being in the dark. Being in the dark is like having a closed mind because you haven’t considered other people’s ideas. Whereas lighting a light is like trying to understand people’s perspectives. So light is a symbol of a bright and open mind and dark is a symbol of limited knowledge and a closed mind.
I chose a circle because it shows that everyone is equal because they are all equal distances apart from the thing they’re looking at and the people aren’t in groups or clumps. The edge of the circle is dark (black) and then gradually gets lighter towards the centre. This symbolises going from dark to light.
I decided to make this artwork out of pebbles. Each one symbolises that every person is an individual and unique. In the middle of the circle, a candle because it is the most pure simple form of light.
So each pebble represents a different person. And each colour represents a different idea depending on its shade, but where two colours blend together it is like two people understanding each other. For example if red was the idea of Christianity, a dark red would be a very Orthodox Christian, whereas a pink could be a Christian who is very open minded and can accept and try to understand other people’s faith and ideas.
My mum mentioned the quote “Rather than curse the darkness, light a candle.” I decided to include the quote. The most important part is the dark changing into light because it clearly shows the difference between an open and closed mind. It also effectively shows how only a few people are open-minded but most people are closed-minded.
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This PowerPoint sequence supports the idea for a piece of work about British values for a large school population from REtoday, September This download resource, free to REtoday magazine subscribers and NATRE members, is copyright RE Today Services and may be used in your own school. Any other use is by written permission. Special thanks to Lauren Smillie for these ideas.
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