To begin our new RE topic ‘Desert to Garden’, we have been looking at the story of Jesus feeding the 5000. We discussed the nature of Jesus’s miracles in the previous topic and concluded that his miracles were only used to help people in need and show the power of God’s Kingdom. After reading the story together in Matthew 14:13-21, we discussed the setting, the people involved, the problem, Jesus’s response, what is offered, Jesus’s actions and the outcome.
We then organised the story into seven key parts: 1) Jesus goes to a quiet place because he has heard about the death of John the Baptist 2) Many people decide to follow him 3) Jesus decides to heal the people who are sick 4) The disciples try to convince Jesus to send the people home. 5) Jesus tells the disciples to feed them themselves 6) Jesus gives thanks to God for the bread and the fish 7) Everyone had enough food to eat.
After placing the key parts into order, we were split into groups of 4 or 5 and each group was given a section of the story to depict in a freeze frame. The rest of the class had to guess what part of the story the freeze frame was depicting and then we all positioned our freeze frames in chronological order so we could see the story from beginning to end. To finish, we were given a story map so we could write up the events of the story in our own words and we are beginning to make connections between this Bible story and other Bible stories which feature the miracles of Jesus and loaves of bread. The next step is to make links between the words and actions in this story with the Last Supper.
