Year 8 Hindu Guest Speaker

As part of the Year 8 enrichment offer, on Thursday 16th November, we were delighted to welcome Neetal Parekh into school to lead a year 8 assembly. Neetal is an Education Liason officer from Lancashire County Council. She spoke to the students about the festival of Diwali which recently took place.

The students really enjoyed listening to her speak as shown in the below quotes from the year 8 students. 

“I liked hearing Neetal talk about the festival of Diwali. She was really enthusiastic and I liked listening to her.”

“One thing that stood out to me was how Hindu Dharma is the preferred term over Hinduism. This is because dharma refers to a way of life. “

“It was fascinating to hear the Hindu speaker talk about her faith. She talked about good beating evil in the story of Rama and Sita and how this is the reason why Hindu’s use lights during Diwali. The lights symbolise goodness beating the darkness (evil).”

The Ramayana – The story of Rama and Sita is the reason behind the festival of Diwali. It is first studied in year 7 and then revisited with students in year 8 and 11 (core RE).

What is the story about?

“Dashratha, King of Ayodhya, has four sons by three different wives: Rama (who was the eldest), Lakshman and Satrugna (who were twins) and Bharat (the youngest). Rama has married Sita and Dashratha wishes to pass the throne to his eldest son. But the mother of Dashratha’s youngest son, Barat, is jealous and wants her child to be king. She forces Dashratha to exile Rama, Sita and Lakshman to the forest for 14 years. In the forest the evil demon Ravana seizes Sita and takes her to his island home of Lanka. Rama follows a trail of Sita’s jewellery and then meets Hanuman, the monkey-king. Hanuman uses his magic power of flight to discover where Sita is and then, with Rama, they raise an army of animals and march on Lanka. Rama kills Ravana with a magic arrow and then, their exile over, he returns to Ayodhya with Sita and Lakshman. The people light their way home with little lamps left outside their homes.” ( BBC Bitesize)

If you’d like to know more about the story follow the link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/school-radio/assemblies-ks1-ks2-festivals-diwali-rama-and-sita/zc84cmn

Future Guest Speakers Wanted

Dear Parent/Carer,

On the 13th December, year 11 will be taking part in a Religious Studies personal development afternoon 1:20pm-3:20pm. The focus for this year group’s session is the Penwortham Girls’ value of curiosity as we aim to encourage students’ to be curious about the faiths of others.

We would love to have a representative from each of the 6 main world religions to deliver a 20-minute in-person session to our year 11 students about their faith. The session should focus on festivals.

We currently have speakers representing: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.

If you or someone you know belongs to one of the following religions and would be willing to come in on the 13th December for the 2-hour session, then please contact Miss Buckle by Friday 1st December via the email below for more details about the afternoon.

· Judaism

· Sikhism

Yours faithfully,

Miss A.Buckle

Teacher of RE (a.buckle@penworthamgirls.lancs.sch.uk)

Share!