What is RE?

“RE is important for other children to learn other religions. They might discover a faith that they believe in or learn to show respect to others who believe in other things. RE is one of my favourite subjects because I like learning more about God and other religions.”

Year 6

“We learn all about Christians. We learn that they have different beliefs to some other people and they believe in a God. It’s important that we learn RE so that we are kind to other people. We shouldn’t be mean just because of someone’s beliefs.”

Year 2

“RE stands for religious education. I think it is important so that people understand about other religions. If you went on holiday to another country, you would need to know what religion they follow in case they ask you speak with them.”

Isaac

Intent

At Alphington, we are creating our future theologists

We want our children to:

– Gain the knowledge, critical thinking skills, respectful attitude and an open mind with which to investigate the world of religion and beliefs.
– To make their own decisions about what this means to them, whilst empathising with what it means to those who hold those beliefs.
– Have an awareness and understanding of the main world religions including their superior being, holy place, holy book, key dates and key beliefs.
– Show respect to others and be prepared for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.

According to the latest guidance from the government, via the National Curriculum for England, every school needs to have a broad and balanced curriculum that:

• promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, social, mental and physical development of pupils
• prepares pupils for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life
• promotes British values.

Implementation

At Alphington, we use Discovery RE, which is a comprehensive enquiry-based teaching programme for Religious Education for Years F1-6 (4-11-year olds). Our belief is that by using this model well, children’s critical thinking skills can be developed, their motivation to learn increases and their knowledge and understanding of, and empathy with people and their beliefs, religious or otherwise, will be enhanced. This approach takes very seriously the philosophy that children are free to make their own choices and decisions concerning religion and belief.

RE is a statutory subject that sits alongside but not in the English National Curriculum and so there is no ‘official’ national agreement on what should be taught, rather a non-statutory national framework to guide syllabus-writing bodies. RE is taught weekly for approximately an hour and Discovery RE recommends teaching Christianity plus one other principal religion / belief system in every year group, and enables all 6 principal religions (Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism) to be considered by the end of Key Stage 2. It also suggests when it might be most appropriate to bring Humanism into RE learning.

Discovery RE promotes this enquiry approach because it had become evident from teachers and children’s work across hundreds of schools in England, that this motivates in-depth exploration of RE content/subject knowledge in order to answer the big enquiry question. Knowledge is no longer an end in itself, it is now important as the means with which to explore potential answers to the big questions posed in each Discovery RE enquiry e.g.

Is it true Jesus came back to life again?

Does joining a Khalsa make a person a better Sikh? Does belief in Akhirah (life after death) help Muslims lead good lives?

The four steps are:

• Step 1: Engagement: the children’s own human experience is explored to act as a bridge from their world (which may or may not include religion) into the world of the religion being studied.
• Step 2: Investigation: over approximately 3 lessons the teacher will guide the children to explore and investigate appropriate subject knowledge relevant to that question of enquiry.
• Step 3: Evaluation: An assessment activity enables each child to show their thinking and the depth of critical evaluation.
• Step 4: Expression: This refers the children back to the starting point of their own experience and allows them to reflect on whether their findings have influenced their own thinking.

Impact

The majority of our lessons are discussion based and encourage critical thinking skills. However, some lessons will be recorded in books so that children can also consider what they believe and have the opportunity to deepen or reflect upon their learning.

In each enquiry, there is a section called ‘My Learning Progress’ which children can use for self-assessment and teachers can add comments.