RE
Intent
At Staincliffe (C of E) Junior School we provide a high quality curriculum to ensure that our pupils gain a good understanding of how the beliefs and values of themselves and others are diverse. Pupils will develop a knowledge and understanding of Christianity, other religious traditions and world views, and explore their responses to life’s challenges, giving them the skills to flourish both within our own community and as members of a diverse and global society.
Our curriculum develops pupils’ understanding of world faiths and other ‘beliefs’, exploring their commonality and diversity as well as nurturing pupils’ awareness of the treasury of diversity and ‘belonging’, becoming sensitive to the questions and challenges that different views and cultures can present.
The ‘Believing and Belonging’ curriculum offer at Staincliffe provides a stimulating and rigorous framework for our pupils to learn about religion and world views, alongside nurturing tolerance, respect, empathy and kindness that can be applied in our school, in our community and in the world beyond.
Implementation
To ensure high standards of teaching and learning in RE, we implement a curriculum that is progressive throughout the whole school. RE is taught every week, focusing on skills and knowledge stated in ‘Believing and Belonging’ - the Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education in Calderdale, Kirklees and Leeds (2019-2024) as well as areas specific to the need of our children. Our skills-focussed RE curriculum is delivered through a sequence of engaging ‘big questions’ as the hook that starts each learning journey. Opportunities allow for both depth of study (areas investigated in detail) and breadth (an overall general understanding of the faiths and related philosophical and ethical questions).
Our curriculum provides the opportunities to:
- Investigate the beliefs and practise of religions and other world views;
- Investigate how religions and other world views address questions of meaning, purpose and value;
- Investigate how religions and other world views influence morality, identity and diversity.
To track the progress of our spiritualists, we:
- Create Knowledge Organisers which outline knowledge including vocabulary all children must master and apply in lessons.
- Deliver low stakes quizzes regularly to support learner’s ability to retain learning and increase space in the working memory.
- Implement ‘Challenge Questions’ for pupils to apply learning in a philosophical / open manner.
- Capture ‘Pupil Voice’ at regular intervals.
- Assess pupils on the end of unit expectations and end of Key Stage statements
Impact
By the time they leave us, as spiritualists, our children will have:
- Enhanced their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development through offering ideas and clear responses;
- An awareness of the fundamental questions raised by human experiences, and of how religious teachings can relate to them;
- The ability to respond to such questions with reference to the teachings and practices of religions and other belief systems, relating them to their own understanding and experience;
- The skills to reflect and make connections in their own beliefs, values and experiences through considering, comparing and contrasting opinions and ideas;
- Prepared themselves for their future, for employment and for lifelong learning.
Our RE curriculum is high quality, well thought out and planned to demonstrate progression. If children are keeping up with our curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress and support is put in place for those working towards the curriculum objectives.
Please click here for our RE 'Progression of Knowledge and Skills' document.