At Central Walker Church of England Primary School, pupils and their families can expect a high quality religious education (RE) curriculum that is challenging, rich and varied, enabling learners to acquire a thorough knowledge and understanding of a range of faiths and world views.
As a church school, the teaching of Christianity is at the heart of our RE curriculum. Through the ‘Understanding Christianity’ resource, the use of an enquiry approach engages with significant theological concepts and the pupil’s own understanding of the world as part of their wider religious literacy. Using the Diocese Syllabus, we learn about other religions and world views, fostering respect for them. Links with our Christian values and vision, and support for pupil’s spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) development are intrinsic to our RE curriculum and have a significant impact on learners. We provide a wide range of opportunities for learners to understand and to make links between the beliefs, practices and value systems of the range of faiths and world views studied.
Learning and Teaching
RE has a high profile within our school curriculum and is comparable with other core curriculum areas. Quality teaching in RE helps generate respect for different views and interpretations where real dialogue takes place. Learners develop and use a wide range of higher level skills such as enquiry, analysis, interpretation, evaluation and reflection to deepen their understanding of the impact of religion and world views as lived by believers. Key cross-curricular skills such as reading, writing, observation, and discussion are practised. Rigorous assessment based on knowledge and understanding of core religious concepts shows that children are developing an understanding of Christianity and a range of other world religions and world views as appropriate.
RE offers a wide variety of teaching and learning experiences, understanding that pupils learn best in different ways. Pupils will experience opportunities to learn and express themselves through an enquiry based style of learning by:
- Listening to the teacher and each other
- Asking and discussing ‘big’ questions
- Reading of texts
- Seeking information for themselves in libraries and on computers
- Discussion with the teacher and other pupils
- Paired and group work
- Using a range of media such as artefacts, pictures, photographs, music and drama
- Visits and visitors
- Artwork
- Outdoor learning
- Time for reflection.
We base our teaching and learning style in RE on the key principle that good teaching in RE allows children both to learn about religious traditions and to reflect on what the religious ideas and concepts mean to them. Our teaching enables children to extend their own sense of values and promotes their spiritual growth and development. We encourage children to think about their own views and values in relation to the themes and topics studied in the RE curriculum.
Our teaching and learning styles in RE enable children to build on their own experiences and extend their knowledge and understanding of religious traditions. We use their experiences at religious festivals such as Easter, Passover etc. to develop their religious thinking. We organise visits to local places of worship and invite representatives of local religious groups to come into school and talk to the children.
Children carry out research into religious topics. They study particular religious faiths and also compare the religious views of different faith groups on topics such as rites of passage or festivals.
The children in Year 6 Visited Newcastle Central Mosque as part of their RE topic ‘What does it mean for Muslims to follow God?’. The children learned lots of fantastic information about Mosques and how important they are to Muslims, and they asked some very respectful questions to deepen their understanding of places of worship.
