Useful Websites
Want to inject some new ideas into your RE lessons and enthusiasm among your students? Check out the following websites
UK Websites
Requires a log in. Over 12,000 free religious education resources: religious education lesson plans, worksheets, revision, teaching ideas and much more.
Truetube is a fantastic site full of free lesson plans and assemblies. Go to the Ethic & Religion section where you will find over 100 short films on various topics ranging from the Holocaust to the Death Penalty.
Key stage 3, 4 & post 16 resources. Choose the religion and theme you are studying from the drop-down lists to find useful resources. It basically links to other useful websites.
Website of links to resources.
RE:Quest is a toolkit for teaching about Christianity in R.E. The issues section contains materials suitable to explore what Christians believe about life’s big issues.
Quodvultdeus is a free resource site, developed in the setting of Catholic religious education. All the resources are original and free to use for educational purposes to download, use and adapt. It is a work in progress.
There is a lot of focus on preparation for the sacraments, however they have some excellent PowerPoints on Pope John Paul II and they have recently added some great resources for the Year of Faith.
http://www.thetablet.co.uk/page/leaving-certificate-religious-education-ireland
A selection of articles from the Tablet newspaper archive sorted by Leaving Certificate Religious Education units for Ireland.
Excellent resources on World Religions.
CAFOD is the official Catholic aid agency for England and Wales.
This is a great site from the British Library with animated stories from sacred texts. I particularly like the Understanding Sacred Texts section (http://www.bl.uk/learning/cult/sacred/understanding/) where you can pose a range of questions to a panel of interviewees – educators, young people, theologians, faith leaders and an atheist philosopher. You can have students compare their answers and discover the fascinating contrasts and crossovers that exist between the Hebrew Bible, the Christian Bible & the Qu’ran and their interpretations.
A great site for senior students interested in philosophy.
U.S. Websites
Thereligionteacher is a U.S. Catholic website where you will find practical resources, activities, lesson plans, prayers, and teaching strategies. Jareed Dees set this site up and it is regularly updated and should be a great supplement to your R.E. teaching.
This site contains ‘practical lesson plans and activities for Catholic educators’. The topics section links contains a good section on social justice.
Bustedhalo is an online Catholic magazine containing excellent videos and podcasts.
Ignitermedia produce powerful videos on Christian topics and themes. Their ‘social network’ mini movies are very popular with students.
WingClips is a great resource for movie clips to be used in teaching for schools. They have made a large number of movie clips available that are intended to inspire people or illustrate points.
Huffington Post contains a wide variety of current articles about religion.
This website presents the words and images that are trending on news sites across the world in real time. Every hour of every day the site collects the most popular 100 words and 100 images based on feeds from the likes of ABC, Reuters and the BBC. These words and images are presented as a single image made up of 10×10 smaller images. You can then click on individual windows to read more about the story or get information behind the keyword or image.
Irish Websites
The RESS is the support service from the PDST for the J.C. & L.C. R.E. syllabus. It is an excellent resource if your students are following either course.
This website presents the syllabus of the Junior Certificate Religious Education exam in an interactive format.
IMU is the Irish Missionary Union website and the Mission Alive section contains the inter-faith calendar and various other useful resources.
The website resources cover a broad range of development issues including climate change and the world food crisis.
The Combat Poverty website.
Jesuit Centre for Faith & Justice social justice schools website.
Graphic Organisers:
These two sites have lots of free graphic organisers you can use in R.E. classes to enhance literacy and learning outcomes.
www.teacherfiles.com – Source of free educational resources for teachers to use in their classrooms including a variety of graphic organisers for students to show what they know.
www.teacherprintables.net – Free printable teaching resources made for teachers to quickly print-off and use in their classrooms.
Using Word Clouds
www.wordle.net – Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and colour schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your students.
Example: This wordle was made from the words in the description above. The more times a word appears in the text, the bigger they appear in the Wordle image. You have font and colour options so you can personalize your Wordle.
www.tagxedo.com – This free tool requires no login accounts, and has the additional bonus of offering educators the chance to save their word clouds in a variety of different jpeg resolutions. The user interface is clear and well organized. You will have no trouble customising your fonts, colors, and layouts due to the easy one click selection process. Shapes can also be used in Tagxedo.
ABC Ya – (http://www.abcya.com/word_clouds.htm ) This website operates much like Wordle. It creates final results that allow for font change, colour change, and a randomised layout. Save options are in jpeg format and there are print options. It does not require email or log in.
Tagul – (http://tagul.com/ ) – Tagul has some features that Wordle doesn’t, like custom shapes selection and multiple fonts usage in one cloud. It also allows for the use of tagged words that can act as pointers to URL’s if embedded in a web page. It abounds in options but registration may limit classroom use. Tagul requires a log in with email.
Word It Out (http://worditout.com/ ) – Much like Wordle, it creates word clouds out of any text that you paste into the text box. This application allows the word cloud to be customized by size, font, and color scheme. Word It Out also allows the user to ignore certain words and thus keeps them out of the word cloud. It can be used without a login, although the saving option requires an email. You can work around this option by right clicking to save as jpeg and/or screen print.
Wordsift – (http://www.wordsift.com/ ) – This hidden gem from Stanford University does not give the pretty effects of Wordle, but does give several amazing features that allow students to really analyse a word cloud. One unique feature allows words to be listed by how common or rare they are. Also allows for words to be listed in alphabetical order. Wordsift allows the user to click on words to view in an online visual thesaurus with dictionary, google images, and word sentence placement. It even allows the user to view words by subject area and cross curricular areas by unique colour coding and definitions that relate to specific disciplines. You can watch a video lesson on using Wordsift with students on a lesson about Dr. Martin Luther King Junior (www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaIb_GNs_U8). It even covers assessment of students using Wordsift. No login or email required. Any printing or saving would need to rely on a screen print.
Making animated videos & slideshows
GoAnimate state-of-art animation tools are perfect to complement your teaching and get your students to put learning into practice. There is a cost if you create animations but you can apply for a school account which reduces this.
Animoto helps create stunning video slideshows. Get your students to turn their photos, video clips, and music into stunning classroom resources to share with everyone. On the homepage click on education where you can apply for a free account.