Introduction

Through the teaching of religious education, children should be provided with a secure setting to develop their beliefs and understanding. At West Blatchington Primary and Nursery School, we aim to provide this supportive context, encouraging all learners to develop their individual sense of identity and belonging. With a diverse range of children attending our school, we see it as crucial for our children to be taught about all key religions in order to develop respect and understanding for their peers with different beliefs and practices.

Aim

Our aim for religious education is:

• To bring learners into contact with and provoke challenging questions
• To provide a safe and secure setting in which learners can explore and develop their own beliefs and understanding of major religious and spiritual concepts and ideas
• To provide a supportive context that enables learners to develop and build a good sense of identity and belonging
• To enable learners to develop understanding, respect and empathy for others of different beliefs and practices and to be able to challenge and overcome prejudice
• To enable learners to consider, understand and live up to their responsibilities towards themselves, their families, society and a possible higher authority

Curriculum/Scheme of Work

At West Blatchington Primary and Nursery School we follow the London Borough of Bexley Agreed Syllabus. This scheme covers various religious traditions in depth as the children move up the school. The children study Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Jewish people. This syllabus is based around a key questions approach: each unit has a key question which is explored in depth during the teaching and learning of it. The teaching is structured around the three aims and three strands: Believing, Expressing and Living.

Planning

We focus on a specific question each half term. This allows the children to explore each question in depth and gives the children the subject knowledge to be able to provide thoughtful answers to the question. There is no key religious character in our school, so we have chosen to provide a broad curriculum to give our children a full understanding of each religion covered.

Throughout the school year, the children build on their knowledge and understanding through coverage of three strands:

Believing – Focus on the religious beliefs, teaching and sources. Children are asked questions about meaning, purpose and truth.

Expressing – Focus on religious and spiritual forms. Children are asked questions about identity and diversity.

Living – Focus on religious practices and ways of living. Children are asked questions about values and commitments.

Differentiation

All children are given the opportunity to access the curriculum through providing differentiated and ambitious lessons with appropriate challenge and support. All pupils will be challenged including the more able. For children with SEN, tasks will be adjusted or pupils will be given support to access tasks. Children will be given different starting points for each lesson providing resources of different complexity and setting tasks of increasing difficulty. Using teacher assessment from previous lessons, some children may start independent tasks without teacher input, others may be set a challenge more suited to their needs. Tasks will be set that allow for a variety of open-ended responses.

Assessment

Formative assessment is ongoing and is against the clear lesson objectives. At the end of the year teachers are required to report to parents/ guardians on their child’s attainment and effort in R.E.