How do we teach Religious Education?

 

Intent:

At Highfields Primary School, the aim of Religious Education is to help children to acquire and develop their knowledge and understanding of Christianity and other faiths represented in the UK.

Religious Education provides children the ability to both learn about religions and learn from religions. Meaning, children appreciate the way that religious beliefs shape lives, they make reasoned and informed judgements about religious and moral issues, and enhance their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

 

Special Educational Needs Disability (SEND) / Pupil Premium / Higher Attainers

All children receive Quality First Teaching. Any child with identified SEND or who is pupil premium may have work additional to and different from their peers in order to access the curriculum dependent upon their needs. As well as this, our school offers a range of opportunities for all children to reach and achieve their full potential.

 

Implementation

At Highfields we follow 'exploRE', the Essex agreed syllabus for Religious Education. Where the following religions have been selected for study:

• Christianity
• Islam
• Judaism
• Hinduism 
• Buddhism
• Sikhism
• Humanism (KS2)

 

We value the religious background of all members of the school community and hope that this will encourage individuals to share their own experiences with others freely.  All religions and their communities are treated with respect and sensitivity and we value the links, which are, and can be made between home, school, and a faith community.  We acknowledge that each religion studied can contribute to the education of all our pupils.  We promote teaching in Religious Education that stresses open enquiry and first-hand experiences wherever possible for both staff and children.

At Highfields Primary School, RE is usually taught for one session each week across the school or lessons may be blocked when appropriate. Lessons in RE follow a learning sequence structured around key questions about a specific religion from the Essex SACRE Agreed Syllabus.

In The Foundation Stage and KS1, work is recorded in large books shared for the whole class to reflect on and in. In KS2, each child has an exercise book in which children record their learning.

R.E. is taught in a variety of ways including teacher led, independent research and class discussion.  Discussions may be recorded informally to show pupils responses and contributions. The lesson is not always recorded in writing.

 

Impact

The children at Highfields Primary enjoy learning about other religions and why people, choose or choose not to follow a religion.  Through their learning, the children are able to make links between their own lives and those of others in their community and in the wider world.  Religious Education provides for cross-curricular learning. Children can explore links with PSHE, Geography and Science. Our children are developing an understanding of other people’s cultures and ways of life, which they are then able to communicate to the wider community.

Religious Education, offers our children the means by which to understand how other people choose to live and to understand why they choose to live in that way. As such, R.E. is invaluable in an ever changing and shrinking world.

 

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

 

• Assessing children’s understanding of topic linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught.
• Summative assessment of pupil discussions about their learning.
• Images and videos of the children’s practical learning.
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).

• Learning walks and reflective staff feedback (teacher voice).

• Governor monitoring with our subject computing link governor.
• Marking of written work in books.