Lesson video

So, our learning objective today is the same as our last lesson.

It's to plan and write an essay about Buddhism.

So, in this lesson, we'll be using all of the key pieces of information that we've acquired over the course of the unit to plan and write this essay.

So, for today's lesson, you'll need an exercise book or a few pieces of paper, you'll need a pencil and you'll need your brain.

Pause the video now, so you can get those things.

Great.

Now that you're ready, let's move on.

So today, we'll be recapping on what an essay is.

Then we'll plan paragraphs four, five, and six, and then you'll get to writing.

An essay is a piece of writing that focuses on a particular subject or topic.

For example, sharks, World War I, the Amazon rainforest, mediaeval monarchs, or Buddhism.

An essay is split into different paragraphs with each paragraph demonstrating a new piece of information or a new idea.

Just like in the previous lesson, you'll need to draw your planning table.

And remember, it needs three columns, so you have a column for your paragraphs, a column for the key information, and a column for your key vocabulary.

Each row needs to include around eight to 10 lines.

Pause the video now, so you can draw your own table in your own book or on your piece of paper.

Great work.

So, this paragraph, paragraph four, is all about the information that we learned in our fourth lesson.

And our fourth lesson question was which festivals do Buddhists celebrate? And of course, we looked particularly at the festival, Wesak.

Let's have a look at our key vocabulary for today.

So, the first thing that you need to do is record the key vocabulary that's written for this particular paragraph so you've got a starting point.

Pause the video now and record that key vocabulary in your table.

I showed you how to do this in the last lesson, so you can recap on the last lesson if you need it.

Now you've got that key vocabulary, let's have a look at the images because the images are going to give us a reminder about how to write our notes.

I gave you a model of how to write your notes based on the pictures in the previous lesson.

If you've forgotten or you need a reminder, you can go back to the last lesson and have a look at that modelling.

Let's take a closer look at the images.

So, here in the images, I can see that there are monks here, celebrating Wesak, that it's the day of the Buddha.

In fact, another name of it is Buddha Day.

Now, Buddha Day is celebrated in April, May, or June.

And this year, in 2020, it was celebrated on Thursday, the 7th of May, 2020.

Now, Buddha Day represents the day that the Buddha was born, the day he reached enlightenment, and the day he died.

So, it's all three things.

Now, you'll also remember that the day that Buddha Day or Wesak is celebrated depends on the cycles of the moon and that's why we have that image there to remind us that it depends on the cycles of the moon.

So, whether it's in April, May, or June, and the particular date.

Now, we can see in the key vocabulary section that there are particular traditions that are celebrated or practised on Wesak.

One of these is bathing the Buddha, and Buddhists do this so they can clean wrong thoughts.

So, it's the idea of cleansing themselves of any wrong thoughts that they might be having or might have had throughout the year.

Another tradition is noble deeds, and this is all about completing or/and acting charitable acts.

So, helping the poor or helping children in schools perhaps.

It can be anything as long as it is a charitable act, it's helping somebody else that, in a way, that doesn't benefit themselves.

And releasing birds, and this represents freeing the mind.

You'll also remember that Buddhists follow the Noble Eightfold Path and we can see here, the Noble Eightfold Path, and there are eight different ways for Buddhists to live their life.

You could choose one of them in your essay and describe it in a little bit more detail.

For example, right meditation.

Buddhists believe that they need to practise meditation in order to live a good life.

Pause the video now so that you can complete your notes on this paragraph.

Now you've had a go at completing the notes for yourself, I'll show you how I completed the notes and you can fill in anything you've missed.

Have a look at my notes and pause the video while you fill in anything you've missed.

Great work.

So, paragraph five.

This is based on our fifth lesson, and our fifth lesson was following the key question, what is life like inside a Buddhist monastery? I really loved this lesson because I got to know a little bit about a monk or a nun's life, and I found out that it was very different to my life and it's really interesting to see how different people live their lives around the world.

Now, of course, the first thing you need to do is record the key vocabulary so you've got a starting point for your note-taking.

Pause the video now so that you can record the key vocabulary.

Excellent work, everyone.

Now that you've recorded that key vocabulary, let's take a closer look at the images.

That'll help us to jog our memories and help us with our note-taking.

So, here I can see this tree and I've got a reminder here of what this means, a key vocabulary, so school.

And that's because we learned about four main branches or schools of Buddhism, and they are Theravada, and circa means around, so the Theravada school emerged at around or circa 500 BCE.

You could use the word around or you could use the word circa.

Then we have the Mahayana school which emerged around or circa 100 CE.

Then the Vajrayana, circa 500 CE, and Navayana, which emerged in 1956.

And you'll remember that BR Ambedkar, who was an Indian politician, developed this school of Buddhism.

I can also see that there are different roles within the Buddhist community and different people who live inside a monastery.

We've got Buddhist monks, who are male, Buddhist nuns, who are female, and we also have lay people or a lay person, and these are people who don't live inside a monastery, but they still follow a part of the Buddhist religion.

When a lay person decides to enter a monastery, either as a child or as an adult, they become known as a novice.

And here we can see a young monk, and here we can see young nuns, and they practise asceticism.

Do you remember that's about focus, self-discipline, and having no luxuries? They give up all their possessions, and a key feature is that they cut their hair as soon as they enter the monastery.

Here, there's a timetable to remind us about what daily life is like inside a monastery.

You might like to write about some of the key features of daily life.

For example, a very early wake up or only having solid meals up until 12 o'clock and meditating a lot throughout the day.

You can pause the video now so that you can write your notes on this section or this paragraph.

Great work, everyone.

Now you've written your own notes, let's compare them to mine so that you can fill in anything you've missed.

Pause the video now so that you can fill in anything you've missed.

Let's move on to our last paragraph.

So, this was all about lesson six.

And in lesson six, we asked the key question, who is the Dalai Lama? But of course, we learned about more than just the Dalai Lama.

We learned about the important feature of the Buddhist religion, reincarnation.

You have the key vocabulary on the right-hand side.

Pause the video now, so you can record the key vocabulary.

Great work, everyone.

Let's take a closer look at the images so that we can recap on the lesson and then you can make your notes.

So, here is an example or an image of reincarnation.

Reincarnation is also called Samsara.

Now, the idea of reincarnation is that a being is born, a being dies, and after death, they're reborn.

As a new being, death continues and then the cycle happens again.

Now, the Buddha taught that reincarnation is dukkha, it's suffering.

And you'll also remember that Hinduism and Jainism are two other religions that believe in reincarnation.

Here, we've got an image of the Wheel of Life.

Now, the Wheel of Life represents six realms. You remember the three good realms, the gods, the demi-gods, and the humans, and the bad realms of reincarnation, the animals, the hungry ghosts, and hells.

Now, here we can see our key word karma, and karma means good actions.

And Buddhists believe that if a being completes good actions, if they have good karma, they'll be reborn into one of the good realms. Do you remember which of the realms you have to enter in order for enlightenment to happen? That's right.

You have to be reincarnated as a human in order to reach enlightenment.

If you reach enlightenment, then the Buddha taught that you can reach Nirvana.

Do you remember, it's the idea of a candle going out, yourself being extinguished.

Now, here's the Dalai Lama.

Do you remember why the Dalai Lama is really important? That's right.

Buddhists who follow the Dalai Lama believe that the Dalai Lama has actually reached enlightenment, but he remains on this earth in order to help others achieve enlightenment.

They believe that when he dies, he's reincarnated into another human being who was born at the moment of his death.

And they look for this Dalai Lama in Tibet.

That's where the Dalai Lama's from.

You'll remember that this is the 14th Dalai Lama and his name is Tenzin Gyatso and he was exiled out of China.

Now you've got all your information and we've discussed this particular paragraph.

You can pause the video so that you can record your notes on this section.

Great work, now you've had a go at recording your notes, let's have a look and compare them with mine.

You can pause the video now and take a closer look so you can fill in any of your notes.

Whew! Done a really good job.

You've got to the end of your note-taking, which means that you're so close to finishing this essay.

As I said before, it's a real challenge and it's amazing that you're taking up that challenge at home.

You should be really, really proud of all the work you've done so far, and I'm really looking forward to seeing so many of your completed essays.

I showed you in the last lesson how we write an essay and how we turn our notes into a paragraph.

If you can't quite remember it, you can go back and recap by looking at my video from the last lesson.

Here are all the notes in one table, and yours should look like this as well.

You've spent a lot of time recording those particular notes and recapping any that you've missed.

You'll have this in your own worksheet if you need to recap it later.

Now, just like the last lesson, I've given you a structure strip.

And remember that the structure strip helps to guide your essay writing within each paragraph.

You can use the questions to help you think about what should I write in my next sentence? I'm not going to read through all of these because you have that in your own worksheet and you can come back to it when you're writing your essay.

Now, the conclusion.

When you've written your three paragraphs, paragraphs four, five, and six, the important thing is to end our essay, and that's where we write our conclusion.

Now, I've given you a sentence starter that you could use.

It says, "In my opinion, the most interesting and unique aspect of Buddhism is.

." You might've learned about a different religion throughout your career at school, and you might want to compare Buddhism with another religion you've learned and talk about how they're different.

If you haven't studied another religion, don't worry, that's okay.

You can still think about something that you found really interesting and unique about Buddhism, something special about it.

For example, I've said, "In my opinion, the most interesting and unique aspect of Buddhism is the fact that Buddhist lay people can become a monk or a nun as children, and can live in a monastery learning how to become a full monk or nun." That's something that I found really interesting, and I thought that was unique that they enter as children.

I wonder what you think is the most interesting and unique aspect of Buddhism.

Let's recap on our steps to success before I set you off on writing.

Write in full sentences.

Two, include key information and key vocabulary.

Again, you'll have your plans so that'll be really helpful.

Three, leave a line between each paragraph.

Don't forget that because your reader will want to see where one paragraph ends and another begins.

And four, imagine you're explaining this topic to someone who's never learned about it before.

So, remember to expand on your notes, to explain and give more information.

Don't forget, you've got the last three paragraphs and your conclusion to write.

As I said, you'll have all you need, the notes, the structure strip, the conclusion slide, and your steps to success in your own separate worksheet, so you can recap on what we've discussed without looking back at the video.

Now, I would love to see your completed essays.

It makes me so happy to see how many children have taken up the challenge of writing an essay.

It's a really tricky thing to do, and I think that you're amazing for having a go, and I'd love to see the work you've done.

So, if you'd like to share what you've learned, ask your parent or carer to share your work on Twitter @OakNational with the hashtag #LearnWithOak.