Year 6 – 09/02/18 – Pope Paul Primary

The focus of this year’s Other Faiths Week has been Judaism, as it is in keeping with our whole-school RE topic on the Exodus story and Passover. To learn more about the faith, we visited the New North London Synagogue in Finchley. We were welcomed by a female rabbi who explained the significance of various objects and symbols within the synagogue, and we even got the chance to see the Torah up close. Some of our favourite facts that we learnt from the trip are:

If the Torah is dropped, all the Jewish worshipers have to fast for the whole day or donate to a charity to say sorry.
It takes about a year for the Torah to be written. If the word ‘God’ is spelt incorrectly, the Torah must be buried.
The Torah contains no vowels or punctuation, so the rabbi has to prepare what they’re reading in advance.
Whereas in our Bible the stories are read from right to left, the Jews read the Torah from right to left.
The Torah is kept safely away from everyone in a big cupboard called The Ark, which is hidden behind a foldable wall.

The children were asking fantastic questions and the woman was so impressed with their behaviour and attention during the visit. Well done Year 6!

In our science topic on Evolution, we have begun looking at the influence of Charles Darwin. This week, we focused on his love for nature as a child, when he would go on country walks, to observe the leaves and bugs he found there. The class re-enacted this by taking leaf samples and making observations of them.

Tuesday was Safer Internet Day and in Year 6, we considered how we are influenced by the social media, and the positive and negative effects of what we post online. Each child then decided something positive they could do online to make the internet a happier place.

Click here for the half-term home learning letter.