Curriculum Statement for RE

Intent

At Silvertrees Academy, we follow SACRE, the agreed syllabus for Sandwell. Children are taught to understand and respect the importance of religious beliefs in the world around them, whilst also allowing them to explore their own spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. We aim to ensure that the RE curriculum is challenging, dynamic and relevant to pupils of all ages. We believe that RE is an essential component of a broad and balanced education, which brings understanding and tolerance allowing children to discuss, debate and disagree in a respectful way, essential for life in modern Britain and the wider world.

Within the Early Years, RE is taught with a focus on our children’s own cultural experiences and the faith of their families. This is to ensure that the learning is meaningful to the children in our cohort. In Key Stage 1 RE is aimed at supporting children’s own spiritual, moral, social and cultural development through the knowledge and understanding of different faiths and religions.

At Silvertrees we believe that the beliefs and worldviews of all our families are of equal importance and these will be represented in all of our classrooms.

The aims of teaching RE in our school are:

To make sense of a range of religious and non-religious beliefs, so that they can:

• Identify, describe, explain and analyse beliefs and concepts in the context of living religions, using appropriate vocabulary.
• Explain how and why these beliefs are understood in different ways, by individuals and within communities.
• Recognise how and why sources of authorities/information (e.g. texts, teachings, traditions, leaders) are used, expressed and interpreted in different ways, developing skills of interpretation.

Understand the impact and significance of religious and non-religious beliefs, so that they can:

• Examine and explain how and why people express their beliefs in diverse ways.
• Recognise and account for ways in which people put their beliefs into action in diverse ways, in their everyday lives, within their communities and in the wider world
• Appreciate and appraise the significance of different ways of life and ways of expressing their beliefs.

Make connections between religious and non-religious beliefs, concepts, practices and ideas studied, so that they can:

• Evaluate, reflect on and enquire into key concepts and questions studied, responding thoughtfully and creatively, giving good reasons for their responses .
• Challenge the ideas studied and allow the ideas to challenge their own thinking, articulating beliefs, values and commitments clearly in response.
• Discern possible connections between the ideas studied and their own ways of understanding the world, expressing their critical responses and personal reflections with increasing clarity and understanding.

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 through half termly topics, focusing on knowledge and skills stated in the Sandwell SACRE. At Silvertrees, we ensure that RE has the same importance given to it as the core subjects, as we feel this is important in enabling all children to understand and make sense of different beliefs.

Teachers plan lessons for their class using our progression of knowledge and skills document, alongside the Sandwell SACRE. These documents ensure the curriculum is covered and the skills/knowledge taught is progressive from year group to year group.

The teaching of RE enables children to make religious connections and encourages them to celebrate their differences. A variety of teaching approaches are used based on the teacher’s judgement.

Educational visits are another opportunity for the children to apply the knowledge they have learnt during RE lessons and gain first hand experiences.

Impact

Our RE curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. We focus on progression of knowledge and skills and key vocabulary is taught discreetly as part of the units of work.

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• Assessing children’s understanding of topic linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught.
• Summative assessment of pupil discussions about their learning.
• Images and videos of the children’s individual experiences.
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Moderation staff meetings where pupil’s books are scrutinised and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work.
• Annual reporting of standards across the curriculum.
• Marking of written work in books.