Unit Overview

The Liturgical Year units enable students to explore the traditions, beliefs, Scripture and events celebrated by the Catholic community throughout the Liturgical Year and especially during the time of Advent to Christmas, Lent to Holy Week and Easter to Pentecost.

The Year 5 Liturgical Year unit is broken into the following key ideas:

● Advent – Advent helps us to prepare for the promised Messiah.
● Christmas – The incarnation and birth of Jesus Christ is significant for the people of God.
● Lent – Lent is a time of spiritual growth and conversion.
● Holy Week – The Church remembers the rejection, suffering and death of Jesus during Holy Week.
● Easter – Easter celebrates the Resurrection of Jesus and is a time of hope and new life.

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Enduring Understanding

The Liturgical Year enables Christians to remember and celebrate the birth, life, death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ.

Objectives

A student will

  • value and appreciate and become aware of the potential for relating with God within the sacraments, liturgy and prayer; be willing to engage in personal and communal prayer and the liturgical life of the Church
  • develop an understanding of the celebrating community and the individual in the sacraments, liturgy and expressions of prayer in the Catholic tradition
  • interpret and communicate the nature and development of the sacraments, liturgy and prayer; prepare and participate in various expressions of private prayer and communal celebrations

Outcomes

A student

  • recognises the significance of each season in the Liturgical Year. (RECVDLY5)
  • identifies the traditions, beliefs, Scripture and events associated with the Liturgical Year. (RECKDLY5)
  • examines the birth, life, death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ. (RECSDLY5)

Essential Questions

  1. How is Lent a time of spiritual growth and conversion?
  2. How does the Church remember the rejection, suffering and death of Jesus during Holy Week?
  3. How is Easter, the celebration of Jesus’ Resurrection, a time of hope and new life?
  4. How does the liturgical season of Advent help us to prepare for the promised Messiah?
  5. How is the incarnation and birth of Jesus Christ significant to the people of God?

Learning Focus, Statements of Learning & Course Content

  1. Students recognise that Lent is a time of spiritual growth and conversion by
    • exploring the Catholic Church’s practices associated with Lent.
    • Prepare the classroom prayer place, using the story script Our Lenten Prayer Place.
    • Define ‘spiritual growth’ and ‘conversion’.
    • Read KWL Book 5 Chapter 3 Pray, Fast, Give to the Poor! p45-46 and explore the Lenten practices of repentance, prayer, fasting, almsgiving and abstinence.
    • reflecting on Jesus’ experience of temptation in the desert.
    • Explore Matthew 4:1-11 Jesus in the Desert (storytelling).
    • Explore how Jesus faced difficulty and challenge during his time in the desert.
    • Explore how Jesus, overcoming temptation in the desert, is a model for us to overcome our own temptations so that we can continue to experience spiritual growth and conversion.
  1. Students deepen their understanding of the events of Jesus’ rejection, suffering and death by
    • exploring the events of Holy Week in Scripture.
    • Read KWL Book 5 Chapter 6 In Scripture p67-70 and identify the key events leading up to the suffering and death of Jesus.
    • Explore Mark 11:7-11 Jesus’ Entry into Jerusalem and identify the crowds’ response to Jesus.
    • Explore Matthew 26:36 – 27:56 The Passion and Death of Jesus and identify how Jesus was rejected.
    • Explore Matthew 27:45-53 The Death of Jesus and reflect on the imagery used within Matthew’s account of Jesus’ death.
    • exploring how the Church remembers the Passion of Jesus during Holy Week.
    • Explore Holy Week (storytelling)
    • Identify the key liturgies that the Catholic Church celebrates during this week.
    • Explore the key parts, symbols and rituals of the Good Friday Liturgy.
    • Pray the Stations of the Cross, contemplating the rejection, suffering and death of Jesus.
  1. Students recognise that Easter, the celebration of Jesus’ Resurrection, is a time of hope and new life by
    • exploring the paschal mystery.
    • Prepare the classroom prayer place using the story script Our Easter Prayer Place.
    • Explore the paschal mystery by examining the Passion, death, Resurrection and glorious Ascension of Jesus, whereby “dying he destroyed our death, rising he restored our life” #CCC 1067.
    • Explore Luke 24:35-43 Jesus Appears to His Disciples and reflect on Jesus’ response and message to them.
    • exploring how the Church celebrates the death and Resurrection of Jesus during the Easter Vigil.
    • Explore The Easter Vigil (storytelling).
    • Investigate key symbols and ritual actions used during the Easter Vigil.
    • Celebrate a prayer service using the Easter Vigil to proclaim Christ, the light of the world
    • exploring the presence of the Holy Spirit within the Church community.
    • Explore Acts 2:1-13 The First Pentecost (storytelling).
    • Examine how the presence of the Holy Spirit guided and strengthened the apostles to carry out the mission of Jesus.
    • Read KWL Book 5 Chapter 8 Our Heritage p90 and examine how the presence of the Holy Spirit guides and strengthens the Church community today to bring hope and new life to others.
  1. Students recognise that Advent is a time of preparing for the arrival of Christ, the Messiah, by
    • identifying Advent as a time of preparation that begins the Church’s liturgical year.
    • Prepare the classroom prayer place, using the story script Our Advent Prayer Place.
    • Read KWL Book 5 Chapter 19 Our Heritage p193 and investigate religious signs and symbols that help Catholics prepare for the coming of Jesus.
    • Examine ways families, schools, parishes and the wider community prepare for the coming of Jesus.
    • Identify prayers and hymns that are used during the Season of Advent.
    • describing the ways people in Scripture prepared for the promised Messiah (storytelling).
    • Define ‘Messiah’.
    • Explore Isaiah 40:3-5; Luke 3:2-6, 10-16; John 1:6-8, 15, 19-23 in Prepare the Way (storytelling).
    • Discuss how the prophets helped God’s people prepare for the coming Messiah.
    • Read KWL Book 5 Chapter 19 Preparing in Faith p185 and In Scripture – John 1: 19:23 p187-188 and explore the witness of John.
  1. Students recognise that the birth of Jesus is important by
    • describing the ways that the people of God respond to the incarnation and birth of Christ.
    • Define the incarnation of Christ (He became truly man while remaining truly God. Jesus Christ is true God and true man.# CCC 464)
    • Explore Luke 2:1-20 The Birth of Jesus (storytelling).
    • Reflect on how the shepherds responded to the gift of Jesus.
    • Read KWL Book 5 Chapter 19 The birth of Jesus is announced to the Shepherds p188 and explore the message revealed by the angels.
    • Read KWL Book 5 Chapter 19 Our Prayer p189 and pray this, as an example of a Christmas prayer of praise.
    • Construct prayers and use art and hymns to create a class celebration honouring the birth of Jesus Christ.

Unit Content 2 (Holy Week):
Mark 11:7-11 Jesus’ Entry into Jerusalem
Matthew 26:36 – 27:56 The Passion and Death of Jesus
Matthew 27:45-53 The Death of Jesus
Unit Content 3 (Easter):
Luke 24:35-43 Jesus Appears to His Disciples

Ordinary Time
Our Prayer Place
Unit Content 1 (Lent):
Our Lenten Prayer Place
Matthew 4:1-11 Jesus in the desert
Unit Content 2 (Holy Week):
Holy Week
Unit Content 3 (Easter):
Our Easter Prayer Place
The Easter Vigil
Acts 2:1-13 The First Pentecost
Unit Content 4 (Advent):
Our Advent Prayer Place
Isaiah 40:3-5; Luke 3:2-6, 10-16; John 1:6-8, 15, 19-23 Prepare the Way
Unit Content 5 (Christmas):
Luke 2:1-20 The Birth of Jesus

Lent and Holy Week

 472 – This human soul that the Son of God assumed is endowed with a true human knowledge. As such, this knowledge could not in itself be unlimited: it was exercised in the historical conditions of his existence in space and time. This is why the Son of God could, when he became man, “increase in wisdom and in stature, and in favour with God and man”, and would even have to inquire for himself about what one in the human condition can learn only from experience. This corresponded to the reality of his voluntary emptying of himself, taking “the form of a slave”.

589 – Jesus gave scandal above all when he identified his merciful conduct toward sinners with God’s own attitude toward them. He went so far as to hint that by sharing the table of sinners he was admitting them to the messianic banquet. But it was most especially by forgiving sins that Jesus placed the religious authorities of Israel on the horns of a dilemma. Were they not entitled to demand in consternation, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” By forgiving sins Jesus either is blaspheming as a man who made himself God’s equal, or is speaking the truth and his person really does make present and reveal God’s name.

1430 – Jesus’ call to conversion and penance, like that of the prophets before him, does not aim first at outward works, “sackcloth and ashes,” fasting and mortification, but at the conversion of the heart, interior conversion. Without this, such penances remain sterile and false; however, interior conversion urges expression in visible signs, gestures and works of penance.
1818 – The virtue of hope responds to the aspiration to happiness which God has placed in the heart of every man; it    takes up the hopes that inspire men’s activities and purifies them so as to order them to the Kingdom of heaven; it keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude. Buoyed up by hope, he is preserved from selfishness and led to the happiness that flows from charity.

Easter

645 – By means of touch and the sharing of a meal, the risen Jesus establishes direct contact with his disciples. He invites them in this way to recognise that he is not a ghost and above all to verify that the risen body in which he appears to them is the same body that had been tortured and crucified, for it still bears the traces of his passion. Yet at the same time this authentic, real body possesses the new properties of a glorious body: not limited by space and time but able to be present how and when he wills; for Christ’s humanity can no longer be confined to earth, and belongs henceforth only to the Father’s divine realm. For this reason too the risen Jesus enjoys the sovereign freedom of appearing as he wishes: in the guise of a gardener or in other forms familiar to his disciples, precisely to awaken their faith.

655 – Finally, Christ’s Resurrection – and the risen Christ himself – is the principle and source of our future resurrection: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep…. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”  The risen Christ lives in the hearts of his faithful while they await that fulfillment. In Christ, Christians “Have tasted … the powers of the age to come” and their lives are swept up by Christ into the heart of divine life, so that they may “live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”

1002 – Christ will raise us up ‘on the last day’; but it is also true that, in a certain way, we have already risen with Christ. For, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, Christian life is already now on earth a participation in the death and Resurrection of Christ. And you were buried with him in Baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.  If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

1067 – dying he destroyed our death, rising he restored our life.

1168 – Beginning with the Easter Triduum as its source of light, the new age of the Resurrection fills the whole liturgical year with its brilliance. Gradually, on either side of this source, the year is transfigured by the liturgy. It really is a “year of the Lord’s favour.” The economy of salvation is at work within the framework of time, but since its fulfillment in the Passover of Jesus and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the culmination of history is anticipated “as a foretaste,” and the kingdom of God enters into our time.

 

Advent/Christmas

423 – We believe and confess that Jesus of Nazareth, born a Jew of a daughter of Israel at Bethlehem at the time of King Herod the Great and the emperor Caesar Augustus, a carpenter by trade, who died crucified in Jerusalem under the procurator Pontius Pilate during the reign of the emperor Tiberius, is the eternal Son of God made man. He ‘came from God’, ‘descended from heaven’, and ‘came in the flesh’. For ‘the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father… And from his fullness have we all received, grace upon grace’.

522 – The coming of God’s Son to earth is an event of such immensity that God willed to prepare for it over centuries. He makes everything converge on Christ: all the rituals and sacrifices, figures and symbols of the “First Covenant”. He announces him through the mouths of the prophets who succeeded one another in Israel. Moreover, he awakens in the hearts of the pagans a dim expectation of this coming.

523 – St. John the Baptist is the Lord’s immediate precursor or forerunner, sent to prepare his way.196 “Prophet of the Most High”, John surpasses all the prophets, of whom he is the last.197 He inaugurates the Gospel, already from his mother’s womb welcomes the coming of Christ, and rejoices in being “the friend of the bridegroom”, whom he points out as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world”.198 Going before Jesus “in the spirit and power of Elijah”, John bears witness to Christ in his preaching, by his Baptism of conversion, and through his martyrdom.

 

524 – When the Church celebrates the liturgy of Advent each year, she makes present this ancient expectancy of the Messiah, for by sharing in the long preparation for the Savior’s first coming, the faithful renew their ardent desire for his second coming.(200) By celebrating the precursor’s birth and martyrdom, the Church unites herself to his desire: “He must increase, but I must decrease.”(201)

525 – Jesus was born in a humble stable, into a poor family.202 Simple shepherds were the first witnesses to this event. 

In this poverty heaven’s glory was made manifest.203 The Church never tires of singing the glory of this night:

The Virgin today brings into the world the Eternal
And the earth offers a cave to the Inaccessible.
The angels and shepherds praise him
And the magi advance with the star,
For you are born for us,
Little Child, God eternal!

1095 – For this reason the Church, especially during Advent and Lent and above all at the Easter Vigil, re-reads and re-lives the great events of salvation history in the “today” of her liturgy. But this also demands that catechesis help the faithful to open themselves to this spiritual understanding of the economy of salvation as the Church’s liturgy reveals it and enables us to live it.

Unit Content 1 (Lent):
KWL Book 5 Chapter 3 Pray, Fast, Give to the Poor! p45-46
Unit Content 2 (Holy Week):
KWL Book 5 Chapter 6 In Scripture p68-70
Unit Content 3 (Easter):
KWL Book 5 Chapter 8 Our Heritage p90
Unit Content 4 (Advent):
KWL Book 5 Chapter 19 Our Heritage p193
KWL Book 5 Chapter 19 Preparing in Faith p185 and In Scripture – John 1: 19:23 p187-188
Unit Content 5 (Christmas):
KWL Book 5 Chapter 19 The birth of Jesus is announced to the Shepherds p188
KWL Book 5 Chapter 19 Our Prayer p189

Eucharist and Liturgical Rites
Ash Wednesday Liturgy
Holy Week Liturgies
Prayers of the Season of Advent

Praying with Scripture
Stations of the Cross

Other Prayer Forms
Prayer Journal
Guided Meditation

Australian Curriculum

Cross Curriculum Priorities

The General Capabilities

 

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures http://news.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/images/content/icon-k10-ahc.gif

Critical and creative thinking   http://news.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/images/content/icon-k10-cct-1.gif

 

Asia and Australia’s engagement with Asia  

Ethical understanding   http://news.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/images/content/icon-k10-eu.gif

 

Sustainability  http://news.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/images/content/icon-k10-se.gif

Information and communication technology capability   http://news.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/images/content/icon-k10-ict.gif

Other important learning identified by the NSW Educational Standards Authority (NESA):

Intercultural understanding   http://news.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/images/content/icon-k10-iu.gif

Civics and citizenship http://news.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/images/content/icon-k10-cc.gif

Literacy   http://news.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/images/content/icon-k10-l.gif

Difference and diversity http://news.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/images/content/icon-k10-dd.gif

Numeracy   http://news.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/images/content/icon-k10-n.gif

 

Work and enterprise http://news.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/images/content/icon-k10-we.gif

Personal and social capability   http://news.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/images/content/icon-k10-psc.gif