Written by Daniel
In the start of the Spring Term, Year 5/6 were looking at different beliefs in their RE lessons. Because of this, we decided to go on a school trip to the East London Mosque, the biggest mosque in the whole of England.
"It was a interesting experience and I loved learning more about Islam" (Ameer)
The journey getting there was easy. We had to adhere to the clothing rules that the mosque had. Boys had to wear trousers and a jumper (covering their calves and arms), girls had to wear tights and had to bring a scarf (covering their calves and their hair).
When we got immediately inside the building, the girls had to put on their head scarfs. On the wall to our left, there seemed to be intricately drawn patterns which had names on them. When we asked the person showing us around, they told us that the names were of people and their families who had donated large amounts of money to the mosque to keep it running. Coming into a large carpeted room, we were asked to take off our shoes as the room we were about to enter must stay clean. On entering the room we saw that the room had lots of blue lines across it. Here are some facts we learnt about the room:
The lines across the room were where the people were meant to stand when praying.
The whole room was only for the men - the women pray in a separate building
Women can choose whether or not to come and pray
Muslims pray five times a day - before sunrise, midday, late afternoon, after sunset and between sunset and midnight
When Muslims pray, they have special actions which they learn and perform
Coming out of the prayer room, we quickly came downstairs to what looked like a toilet room. The room had rows of stools with water taps flowing into a cement, long tank. We learnt that Muslims must wash their head, arms, hands, face and feet before praying.
From the trip to the mosque, Y5/6 have learnt so much about the Islamic faith that we didn't know before! The trip has definitely helped us a lot!