Religious Education at St Johns
RE Curriculum Intent
The purpose of teaching Religious Education in school is to show children that Christianity is about following the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit that is relevant to their daily lives. It is to extend children’s ability to reflect upon themselves as whole people, experiencing life through body, mind and spirit. To help pupils understand the significance of religion and its contribution to their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. We aim through our teaching, to provide a programme of Religious Education within the framework of the Chester Diocesan Religious Education Guidelines appropriate to the educational needs of the children in our school, at their different stages of development and to contribute to the spiritual, social and moral development of the school as a caring community and the pupils as individuals.
To meet the Religious Education in Schools Statement of Entitlement (2019) we aim:
• To ensure children know about and understand Christianity as a diverse global living faith through the exploration of core beliefs using an approach that critically engages with biblical text.
• To enable children to gain knowledge and understanding of a range of religions and worldviews appreciating diversity, continuity and change within the religions and worldviews being studied.
• To allow children to engage with challenging questions of meaning and purpose raised by human existence and experience.
• To ensure children recognise the concept of religion and its continuing influence on Britain’s cultural heritage and in the lives of individuals and societies in different times, cultures and places.
• To enable children to explore their own religious, spiritual and philosophical ways living, believing and thinking
RE Implementation
• Please open the following link to see our long-term curriculum plan for RE.
• Please open the following link to see the progression of knowledge & skills across this subject.
• We use unit plans to develop the knowledge and skills, resulting in an end of unit challenge for all pupils. Please open the following link to see an example of a unit plan. Wherever possible, teachers will plan units of work that will support learning in other areas of the curriculum.
• Unit plans are developed using 2 programmes of study: The Chester Diocesan Planning and Understanding Christianity.
• RE is taught each week in every class with the key threads being: The Old testament, The New testament, Christian Beliefs and Practise, Torah teaching, Jewish Practise and Teaching, Hindu Beliefs and Practise and Religious Beliefs and Practise
• In RE lessons pupils are provided with safe environments to explore their own thoughts and feelings through having balanced and well-informed conversations about religion and belief.
• In order to fulfil this purpose we are advocate that RE teaching provides a balance between three disciplines. These are: Theology, Philosophy and Human/Social Sciences. Theology is about believing. It looks at where beliefs come from, how they have changed over time, how they are applied differently in different contexts and how they relate to each other. Philosophy is about thinking. It is about finding out how and whether things make sense. It deals with questions of morality and ethics. It takes seriously the nature of reality, knowledge and existence. Human/Social Sciences is about living. It explores the diverse ways in which people practise their beliefs. It engages with the impact of beliefs on individuals, communities and societies.
• We assess pupil progress through an end of unit challenge based on the key knowledge and skills being taught and recorded on the unit plan. The knowledge and skills have been created using the Chester Diocese RE Curriculum ‘I can’ statements and teachers also refer to the Chester Diocese End of Key Stage Statement for RE. Challenge will include using all the knowledge and skills taught across the unit. This is reported to parents at the end of the year as Expected or Not Expected.
• Classes also create an RE learning ladder for each unit of work showing children’s reflections upon key questions in lessons.
• School trips can be used to reinforce work on specific areas of the RE curriculum.
RE Impact
• Pupil work is evidenced in a class RE book that supports all the units taught throughout a school year.
• Individual pieces for each half term can be found in pupils’ RE book.
• Classroom displays reflect the current unit of work displayed as a ladder that builds questions each week leading to the end question which should reflect all the learning throughout that unit.
• In the school hall a whole school display showing ‘The Big Story of the Bible’ highlights to pupils the importance of the core concepts of God, Creation, Fall, People of God, Incarnation, Gospel, Salvation and the Kingdom of God (taken from Understanding Christianity).