TEACHER NOTES The 2000 Advent Calendar is brought to you by Culham as part of its website feature on the Church Year, originally designed to complement Culham's work for schools on Christianity. Purpose Although the main intention of the calendar is to amuse children and young people at Key Stage 2 and older, it should also be interesting for teachers, advisers and other RE professionals. Featured items include curious traditions, carols and activities. We have aimed to provide something thought-provoking which should help users not only to prepare for Christmas but reflect on the meaning of Advent itself. Advent and ICT Because of Culham's commitment to developing good practice in ICT and RE, a distinctive feature of this calendar is the many links it makes with other sites. All these sites have been chosen by teachers and checked for safe use with Key Stage 2 children. Different ICT skills can be practised in using the calendar, e.g. getting onto the internet, identifying and bookmarking sites, downloading, searching and printing out. Advent and creativity The calendar makes use of art, music and the written word. A lesson on the meaning of Advent could have outcomes in all these areas and the results could be put together in an ad hoc school advent calendar. You could also use this as an opportunity to start planning your own on-line advent calendar for next year. This could involve scanning and using word processing and imaging packages or clip art. You will also find simple activities which could be used as a special lesson towards the end of term (e.g. maze making). Advent and history A large number of the features refer to customs or incidents from the past (e.g. the description of Edmund Gosse's experience with the Christmas pudding as an example of a particular attitude to the season). Some of these will seem strange or even ludicrous but could form a useful discussion about what people believed and how they have lived at times other than our own. Technical Help... 1) If parts of this site are missing... This advent calendar makes use of the free browser plug-in called Macromedia Flash 4. If you do not already have this installed, then there are several options: i. install a copy of Microsoft Internet Explorer (either version 5 or 5.5 both of which come with the plug-in) ii. download the plug-in directly from the Macromedia website. This will take a few minutes to do, but once done, your browser will be capable of viewing many other multi-media & interactive websites. Click here to go directly to the download page on the Macromedia website. 2) The carols also make use of the Flash 4 plug-in, these may take a little time to download. May we suggest that you download them before you intend your pupils to play them. This way they will be instantly available. Credits... Special thanks for resources are due to... The Director of Music (David Russell) and Choir of St Mary's R.C. Cathedral, Sydney, with the Cathedral Brass and Gavin Tipping, organist. Dr Graeme Watson, for identification and writing of features. Dr Olga Mataev, for permission to use the Archimbaldo image from her website. Melchior Telematics for website design and production. The site was produced by Diana Lazenby on behalf of Culham. If you have any queries or feedback, please contact us at enquiries@culham.ac.uk Christmas Day Play Some Carols |
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