Anti-sectarian Assembly Plans - Food for Thought

Food for Thought

Aim:
To help pupils consider why it is important to see things from different points of view.

Required:
Four foot-long rulers.
Four dessert spoons.
Tape for taping each dessert spoon to the end of a long ruler.

A packet of marshmallows or the Healthy Eating Option - at least 16 pieces of cut fruit, e.g. apples, pears.

Place the Optical Illusion picture supplied onto acetate or powerpoint. The PowerPoint included, has one optical illusion on it, click here for more optical illusion samples.

Time:
10 minutes.

Suitable for:
P4 onwards.

The Assembly:

1. Ask for 4 pupils as volunteers.
2. Give them a ruler spoon each.
3. Ask them to place a marshmallow or a piece of fruit at the end of the ruler spoon.
4. Ask them to get the food into their own mouths (this is really quite difficult to do) by turning the ruler spoon round to their mouths. They are not to bend down to get to the food, the children must turn the ruler spoon and bring it to their mouths.
5. Ask for ideas from the audience as to how to solve this problem.
6. With some luck, somebody will suggest that the pupils ought to use their ruler spoon to feed each other.

Lessons for the day:
We can learn to solve problems together when we see things from a different perspective.

Learn to see things from someone else's point of view.

Some people think their point of view is always right or is always best and become very intolerant of other people's views. For example, with religion, some people think their religion is better than another person's religion. Instead of living together peacefully and happily some people will fight or hate each other. When people of the same religion start disagreeing or hating each other, this is called sectarianism. When people of different faith groups (e.g. Christians and Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus) start disagreeing or hating each other, this is called religious hatred or bigotry.

Before you judge people, think about things from their point of view.

Have a look at this picture - what do you see?

It should be possible to see a man playing a musical instrument and also the picture of a young girl.

After the assembly, teachers could continue the theme in their classes. Pupils could be asked to think of ways we stereotype and how we could change this by thinking differently.

In the area of sectarianism and religious intolerance, pupils could be asked to think of ways we stereotype or think about different religious and belief groups, e.g. Muslims, Christians (Catholics vs Protestants), Buddhists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Bahá'í, Humanists.

How can we achieve a better understanding of each other?