Junior Cycle religion: A good chance for students to showcase their knowledge

Challenging areas of the paper focused on morality and living our values

Junior Cycle students sat the religious education exam on Wednesday.

The common-level Junior Cert religion paper provided an opportunity for students to showcase their knowledge, understanding and their own values in terms, according to religion teacher Keith Young.

“The paper commenced with an intriguing wedding ceremony question that would engage the students in terms of ritual and symbol,” said Mr Young, who is the subject representative for the Teachers’ Union of Ireland and a teacher at St Finian’s in Swords, Co Dublin.

“Question three explored the founding story of one religion of their choice and the role of others in founding that religion.

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“The paper engaged with many of the learning outcomes across the three strands of Religious Education,” he said.

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“Questions 13 and 15 were perhaps the more challenging questions regarding forgiveness and the promotion of peace and reconciliation in the world today. This allowed opportunities for students to focus on organisations that work in this area and describe the important work that they do.

“Overall, it was a fair paper that students would have had been able to respond well to with perhaps more challenging areas surrounding morality and strand three (living our values) of the RE specification.”

A total of 25,757 students sat the common level religion paper.

Try this one home:

Junior Cycle religion, common level

People have different ways of marking events from the past. Imagine you are helping a friend to mark an event from the past that is important to them. State one ritual or symbol that could be used to mark a past event from a person’s life and explain its meaning.