“Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance,”
Proverbs 1:5
At St Matthew’s Primary school, our Church school Status is at the heart of everything we do and permeates all areas of learning and enjoyment. Our school vision is to encourage all children to flourish spiritually, morally, emotionally, physically and intellectually in all aspects of life demonstrating perseverance and resilience; this is emulated across all curriculum areas.
As a church school our principal aim in teaching Religious Education is to promote the spiritual, moral and curriculum development of all our pupils and to give to them a firm grounding and sound understanding of the beliefs and practices of Christianity along with other faiths. Religious Education at St Matthew's is grounded in our school values, even though the values are rooted within the Christian ethos they apply to all religions and non-religious beliefs. Our values make for good citizenship in an ever-changing world.
Why do we teach RE?
St Matthew's had adopted Understanding Christianity (RE Today services) and Lichfield Religious Education Guidance (The Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education 2017). We also weave into this curriculum our diverse staff expertise and our Christian ethos and values. The Religious Education curriculum at St Matthew's aims to increase our pupils' knowledge of religion and belief, locally, nationally and globally. We aim to expose children to a rich vocabulary so that they can confidently and articulately discuss the above. As a school we try our best to deliver learning in an inspiring way through art, music, drama as well as through discussion and more formal writing opportunities.
By using progressive planning, we can build on prior knowledge in order to achieve breadth and understanding. Through the curriculum we also intend to increase pupils’ capacity to consider thoughtfully, deeply and personally the nature of religion and worldviews including their own ideas, beliefs, values and communities.
Our intent is to provide an academic RE curriculum that enables pupils to hold balanced and informed conversations about religions and worldviews.
How do we deliver the curriculum?
Through the curriculum at St Matthew's we aim to aspire children to have many views rather than limiting them to singular thinking, we try and achieve this by making the resources open to varied interpretations in order to increase our pupils understanding. By building understanding we make sure that the children understand and use specialist vocabulary, therefore as a school we prioritise vocabulary and award it with high importance in order to aid learning. Our learning tasks are delivered in a wide variety of ways so that the children can become articulate at discussing, imagining and arguing and become profound in their insights.
How does the RE curriculum embed the children's understanding?
Pupils progress should be measured in what they say and how their minds have been opened as learners.
Our Religious Education curriculum is a large part of what we do as a school along with the relationships and health education element and our Christian ethos and vision. Our Religious Education curriculum opens lines of enquiry and enables the children to have deep discussions. Our children are making links to other faiths and through our class prayer bags these discussions are also taking place at home. As a school we are excited to learn about the lives of others and their beliefs.
Assessment for learning is observed over the whole unit of work and is viewed as the richness of learning.
Our aim is that the contribution that Religious Education can make will hopefully prepare our pupils for life in modern Britain today.
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| Curriculum Intent, Implementation and Impact Statements | RE Topic Overview | Progression of Knowledge and Skills |
Pictorial Summary (School Development Planning) |
