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I can describe different ways people may express beliefs in ways other than words.

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This content is © Oak National Academy Limited (2023), licensed on Open Government Licence version 3.0 except where otherwise stated. See Oak's terms & conditions (Collection 2).

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Key learning points

Sometimes it is difficult to express feelings and beliefs with only words.
People of faith have often used other ways of expressing deep thoughts.
These may include symbols, patterns, poetry and art.

Common misconception

Words are the only way of explaining things.

People express thoughts and feelings in lots of different ways.

Keywords

Symbol - an object or picture that represents something else
Non verbal - saying things without speech
Express - to make thoughts or feelings known by saying or doing

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Hello, my name is Mrs. Clinton, and I'm excited to be helping you with your learning.

Today's lesson is called symbols instead of words, and it's from the unit, spirituality.

How is art used in religions and beliefs? We will be thinking about how we can describe different ways people may express beliefs in ways other than words.

Sometimes learning can be a little challenging, but that's great as it means that we can work hard together and learn lots of new things.

We are going to be finding out about these key words.

Symbol, an object or picture that represents something else.

Non-verbal, saying things without speech and the word express to make thoughts or feelings known by saying or doing.

And in our lesson, we've got three learning cycles.

And number one, can you express this? So are you set up straight and you're ready to get started? Great.

This is Alexia and she has a Christian worldview.

Here is her church.

And I wonder what you could notice in that picture.

You might want to pause this recording for a moment, and talk to the person next to you.

I noticed in the picture that massive, huge chandelier is very golden, but also the church has got very high ceilings and they right at the front is, I don't know, I suppose something again that's very golden and it's got lots of images of people on it.

I can count sort of 10 people at the top.

Well, actually I can count 12 because the two at the either end seem to have two people and then there's another four underneath that, there's some doors.

And also I can see a big silver stand, something at the front.

So there's lots of images and pictures that I can see in this picture and hopefully you did too.

Alexia has been wondering why in her Greek Orthodox church there are so many images of Jesus and special people.

There we are.

You can see some of those special people there.

And I think the picture on the right might be Mary with a baby, Jesus, because I can see a halo around a little baby sat on somebody's knee and that they're wearing blue.

And that's often the colour that Mary, the mother of Jesus is shown in.

And on the other end it looks like it might be an angel.

I think I can see some wings there in the background and in the middle, I'm not sure who that is.

Might be a saint or it might be Jesus when He's older.

But yes, there are special people on that all over in her Greek Orthodox church.

People have used lots of different ways of communicating to express meaning.

Often people use words, which is fine when people all share the same language, but sometimes there are feelings or ideas that are hard to express fully in words.

In Alexia's church, she's finding images that express important meanings to Christians.

People have used other ways to express deep thoughts and feelings in non-verbal ways.

These include symbols, patterns, poetry and art.

Alexia says, so the reason for paintings and symbols in my church are to show me important people and important beliefs.

Is this sentence true or false? People always use words to express feelings.

You might want to pause the video now and talk with the person next to you.

So is it true or false? People always use words to express feelings.

It's false.

And that's because people use all sorts of different ways to express feelings.

These can include words, but also art, patterns and symbols.

Your face is very good at expressing feelings and thoughts.

Have a look at the images below.

Can you identify the feeling that's being expressed? Hopefully these are straightforward.

So the person on the left is looking happy and the person on the right is looking sad.

Did you get that? Happy and sad.

Can you identify the feeling that's being expressed in this image? You might want to pause the video a moment and talk to the person next to you.

I wonder what ideas you came up with.

I think this young girl is looking quite worried to me, but maybe your answer included sad or upset.

Shall we look at another one? What feeling do you think is being expressed in this image? And you might want to pause the video while you talk to the person next to you.

Shall we see what the answer is? Thoughtful.

I wonder if that was one of the feelings you thought this person was expressing.

Shall we have another go? What about this image? What feeling is being expressed in this image? You might want to pause the video again, and talk to the person next to you.

Shall we have a look and see? Annoyed.

I wonder if you got that feeling being expressed.

We can express emotions in non-verbal ways.

That means ways that we don't use words with.

So I have a question for you now.

Can you identify which image is showing thoughtfulness? Is it A, B, or C? You might want to pause the video while you talk to a partner.

Shall we see what the answer is? Which image is showing thoughtfulness? Was it A, B, or C? The answer is B.

And well done if you got that correct.

Here are three words, grumpy, joy, and love.

With a partner, take turns in using mime or drawing to help each other guess one of the words above.

You cannot use any words, written or spoken in this task.

You can use your body, your hands, or a pencil to draw your answer.

You might want to pause the video while you work with your partner on this practise task.

So here are some examples of what your work might have looked like.

Here's somebody.

Which word do you think this is expressing? Grumpy.

What about this picture? Yes, joyful.

And finally the last one, love.

I wonder how you used your hands and your body to express these feelings, not using words.

And well done if you got those all guessed correctly with your partner.

So next we're going to look at part two of our lesson.

How do religions use poetry? And here's Alexia.

We heard from her earlier, and this she's going to tell us is one of her favourite poems. It's called \"Happy Thoughts\" and it's by Robert Louis Stevenson.

The world is so full of a number of things, I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.

The word poetry comes from Ancient Greek.

And here you can see how the word is made up.

Poiesis, meaning making.

So poetry is a form of word art that uses creative and often rhythmic qualities of language.

It's making meaning.

And when read or spoken aloud, it brings life to those words.

It brings life to meaning.

It helps us understand things a little bit more.

Alexia tells us, \"I love this poem because when it says: the world is so full of a number of things,\" it reminds me of what a wonderful world it is, with so many colours and exciting things!\" I wonder if you feel similar to Alexia about the world.

Now, which two of these statements are true? Poetry can be A, creative, B, rhythmic, C, prose.

So A, B, C, which two can be true of poetry? You might like to pause the video now and speak with the person next to you.

Welcome back.

Well, let's find out the answers that are correct.

So which of these two statements are true? Poetry can be creative and rhythmic.

It's not prose because prose is ordinary writing that we find in books and in encyclopaedias, and often on the internet, poetry is creative and rhythmic.

So here's King David.

Some people believed he wrote a book in the Bible called the Psalms. And can you see in this picture why we know this person is a king.

There's a clue on their head.

That's right.

He's wearing a crown.

And can you also see he's playing something.

What instrument is King David playing? That's right, it's a harp.

And so King David, we can see for this artist maybe uses music and maybe we're going to find out a little bit about poetry.

So the Psalms are a book of poetry found in the Christian Bible or the Jewish Tanakh.

Some were set to music and sung in the Jewish temple in Jerusalem thousands of years ago.

And that's why you can see David's got his harp.

They try to express ideas and feelings bigger than just using ordinary words.

So here are the first lines from Psalm 121, and its title is: \"The Lord will Protect His People.\" And I'm gonna read it out to you now.

\"I'll look to the hills! Where will I find help? It will come from the Lord, who created heaven and earth.

The Lord is your protector and He will not go to sleep or let you stumble.

The protector of Israel doesn't doze or ever get drowsy.\" I wonder what words you particularly liked in this piece of poetry.

I wonder if the choice of words brought up images in your mind 'cause often that's what poetry is trying to do.

It's trying to express ideas and meaning.

So King David is trying to express through poetry what he feels is true about God.

God is the creator of everything, that God will come and help, that God is a protector.

God never sleeps, He's always watching.

So poetry is used here to sing, or speak out what is believed to be true in a lyrical way.

In religions, is it true or false that poetry is used to entertain people? You might want to pause this video, so that you can talk to your partner.

Welcome back.

Shall we see what the answer is? So is it true or false? Poetry is used to entertain people.

That's false.

Why? Because in religions, poetry is always used for more than just entertainment.

It's often expressing important truths about God, important beliefs.

A bit like those ones that we just read in Psalm 121 that King David talks about what God is like, that He's a protector, that He watches over people.

Now I wonder if you can write an acrostic poem to explain why religious people use poetry instead of prose.

An acrostic poem starts each line of the poem with a letter from a main word.

And so I've chosen the less.

The word for you is poem.

And so what I want you to do is to write four lines to make a poem that explains why religious people use poetry, okay.

Why do religious people use poetry? And you might like to pause the video now while you talk or work on your own or maybe in a group or with a partner.

Welcome back.

I hope you enjoyed that activity.

And I wonder if your acrostic poem looks at anything like this.

Poetry is lyrical, of that I'm sure, emotions expressed, meanings burst into life.

I'm sure your acrostic poems could be even better than this one, especially if you've worked with somebody else or in a group.

Your poem might look different to this one, but if it explains what a poem is or how poetry is used in religion, then that's a really good answer.

Well done.

So we're on to now part three of our lesson.

How can symbols and patterns express meaning? Religions can often be identified through a symbol.

It's a quick way for people to communicate non-verbally about the same thing.

Here are some religious symbols on the left.

I wonder if you can identify any of them, if you know any of them.

So here's some answers.

How many of these did you already know? As you can see, there's eight different ones that I've pointed out there.

But maybe you know what some of those other symbols are as well.

Is this statement true or false? True or false? Religions don't like symbols being used.

You might like to talk to the person next to you and pause this video.

Welcome back.

Shall we find out the answer? Religions don't like symbols being used.

True or false? That's false.

Why? People who follow a particular religion have often been those who've created the symbol for that religion.

Symbols are created over time, often taking an important idea, practise or a feature from a particular religion.

In the Christian worldview, Jesus dying on the cross has a central importance as a belief.

So this has become the main symbol.

An even earlier symbol, before the cross was a fish.

And people in the first century often used to with their toe or with a stick draw a fish symbol, a very simple fish symbol in the grounds.

And if the person they were talking to also did that as well, they would know that they were both Christians.

Now in the first century AD, some Christians were being persecuted and so that's why they had in a sense, a symbol that they could use.

And if the other person didn't make the fish sign, they could just rub it out with their foot in the sandy soil.

So what can we see from this? Well, symbols for a religion might change over time like the Christian one has.

Alexia says: \"In my church we have lots of images of the cross.

It helps me to understand that Jesus' death on the cross was very important.\" Many Muslims use the symbol of a moon and stars for Islam.

Muslims often use the moon and stars to find the direction of the Ka'bah in Makkah.

This is because adult Muslims say their set prayers five times a day towards the Ka'bah.

And there's a picture of the Ka'bah.

And you can see lots of Muslim people go walking around the Ka'bah as they do their prayers.

In Sikhi, the symbol for religion is made up of three ceremonial swords and a circle.

The Khanda is the two-sided sword that's used to stir the waters for baptism, which a Sikh person takes when they're ready to live a life fully serving God.

The swords at the side are called kirpans, and these remind Sikhs that they're there to work for justice for all people.

And finally, the circle is there as a reminder that God is eternal.

So you can see this symbol has lots of symbols in it that make up why that's been chosen as the symbol for Sikhi.

There are many examples of how people from different religions and worldviews have used patterns to decorate an important book or a saying.

Look at the intricate patterns that a Christian monk has created on the Lindisfarne gospels in the 8th century AD.

And you can see that would've taken hours and hours of work.

All that decoration done, all that beautiful writing.

And people did this because their beliefs, their religion was really important to them.

And these words were really important.

So can you see there's some very beautiful handwriting on there and that's called calligraphy.

We're going to learn more about calligraphy later in this sequence of lessons.

True or false, religious symbols are chosen by followers because of their meanings? You might want to pause this video and then you can talk to your partner about the answer.

Welcome back.

Shall we see what the answer is? Is it true or false that religious symbols are chosen by followers because of their meanings? It's true.

And why? Because every religious symbol has a story behind it.

They can express a meaning that's important or central to that religion.

Now Sofia and Izzy are thinking about how symbols and patterns can express meaning.

They're wondering if religions use them.

Izzy says, \"Religions don't ever use symbols.\" And Sofia replies, \"I'm not sure that's right, Izzy.\" Can you help Sofia and Izzy answer this question with some examples of how religions use symbols to express meaning? You might like to pause this recording to give you time to work on your own answer, or to work with a partner on an answer together.

Welcome back.

Here's some examples of how religions use symbols.

So Christians use the symbol of the cross because Jesus dying on the cross is an important belief to them.

Muslims use the symbol of the crescent moon as stars as these have helped Muslims to find the direction of the Ka'bah for their prayer.

In Sikhi, the main symbol has a circle in it because of their belief that God is eternal.

You may have other answers as well, but if you've got any of those, really well done, I'm very proud of your answer.

So one of the main points that we've learned from our lesson today on symbols instead of words, well, sometimes it's difficult to express feelings and beliefs with only words.

People in religions often use other ways to express deep meanings or deep thoughts.

And these may include symbols, patterns, and poetry.

And we've looked at symbols and patterns and poetry in this lesson.

Non-verbal ways of expressing meaning are used by different religions to express important beliefs.

Thank you very much for being with me for this lesson, and I hope to see you again soon.

Goodbye.

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