“Like the bee gathering honey from different flowers, the wise person accepts the essence of the different scriptures, and sees only the good in all religions.”
Gandhi
At Evenwood C of E Primary School, children are taught to understand and respect the importance of religious beliefs in the world around them. We encourage children to use and develop their skills in RE and to participate in critical thinking. We aim to ensure that the RE curriculum is challenging, dynamic and relevant to pupils of all ages giving them a better understanding of the world that they live in.
Religious Education and a ‘Christian Ethos’ is embedded throughout the school curriculum and everyday life at Evenwood.
We use a combination of the Diocese syllabus and core concepts of Christian Belief in ‘Understanding Christianity’ across the school to teach RE. We place great importance on providing opportunities for everyone within the school community to continue their personal faith journey. During the school year there are many opportunities for the children to take part in school worship through collective worship and other religious celebrations. This is a time for the children to share their learning with our school community. They are given the opportunity to participate in worship as part of the wider community due to our strong relationship with our local church.
The Governors are required to remind parents of their right to withdraw pupils from religious worship and education. However, parents are also reminded that the school exists to give a Christian education to its pupils and therefore parents are expected to be in sympathy with the aims and objectives of the school. It should be noted that parents who choose to exercise their right of withdrawal are responsible for the supervision of their children during these periods of withdrawal.
In Early Years Foundation Stage, the children develop their understanding of the world, through practical activities, by learning about religion by doing, talking, listening, acting out and experiencing through their senses. All children are encouraged to make sense of their world by being given opportunities to explore and observe three of the core concepts of ‘The Big Story’ – creation, salvation and incarnation.
In Key Stage One, the children continue to develop their knowledge and understanding of religions whilst identifying features of religion and becoming more familiar with religions influence on their own community. They are beginning to identify features of religion and how these may influence themselves and others through five of the core concepts of ‘The Big Story’ – creation, incarnation, salvation, God and gospel.
In Key Stage Two, the children aim to extend their knowledge and understanding of religions locally and worldwide. All children are encouraged to use specific vocabulary when exploring their curiosity and must create increasingly challenging higher-order questions about religious beliefs, values and human life. They make links between values and commitments, and their own attitudes and behaviour, as well as making links between religions and describe some similarities and differences both within and between religions. They are given the opportunity to express their own ideas and opinions in the response to the religious materials they come across. The ability to ‘dig deep’ and give reasons for their beliefs and opinions is vital at this stage of learning to ensure all children are challenged through six of the core concepts of ‘The Big Story’ – creation, incarnation, salvation, God of Kingdom, People of God and gospel.
Our children also attend Godly Play throughout the year.
Cultural Capital
At Evenwood C of E Primary School we value the purpose in learning and the opportunity to develop a broad and rich awareness of the world around us. We recognise the importance and the strength of RE, as a subject, in order to do this. Here is an example of how our RE teaching contributes to the development of our learner’s Cultural Capital: –
Impact
The intended impact of our curriculum is that children build semantic and procedural knowledge. Children will have a wider understanding of the world’s religions, particularly Christianity, and be able to compare and contrast them. Children will have an enriched experience of local and world wide people and places of various religions. They will have developed their own views on world issues. They will be able to speak confidently and they will feel comfortable and confident when debating their own opinions when discussing religion with others.
Websites
Additionally, we recognise technology as a vital tool to support teaching, practise and therefore the learning of key RE principles. Here are the websites our staff use to support their planning.
