Religious Education

Intent

Religious Education at St Peter’s C of E Primary School is of the highest standard and we are always striving for excellence, our syllabus reflects our distinctive Christian character and Religious Education lies at the very heart of our curriculum.

At St Peter’s pupils and their families can expect a religious education curriculum that is rich and varied, enabling learners to acquire a thorough knowledge and understanding of the Christian faith. 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 studied. We believe that Religious Education provides an opportunity to celebrate and foster awareness of these differences within our school and the wider world. It is a subject that celebrates diversity and challenges stereotypes.

Implementation

The Religious Education Curriculum at St Peter’s C of E Primary School includes:

• opportunities to explore the experience of the Church’s year;
• study of the story of the local Christian community with its saints and martyrs;
• visits to places of worship, especially the local parish Church and a Cathedral, to develop the understanding of the Church as a living community;
• welcoming visitors from the local parish to share their experience of Christian belief and life;
• liaison with the local parish to enable these visits and links to occur;
• skills to confidently use religious language to express knowledge and opinions;
• a well-used set of Bibles in language that can be understood by the learners and examples of Bibles and prayer books from a variety of contexts;
• the facility to listen to Christian ‘psalms, hymns and spiritual songs’ from a wide variety of traditions; access to Christian artefacts that are used with care, respect and confidence;
• a sacred space that can be used as a focus for prayer and silent reflection;
• The Scheme of Work At St Peter’s we use the revised ‘Questful RE’ the Blackburn Diocesan Board of Education RE syllabus 2013 in conjunction with the Understanding Christianity resource.
• RE is taught in half termly units in a combination of religion based and thematic topics. Cross curricular links are strongly encouraged and opportunities for developing key literacy and numeracy skills are planned in.

Impact

By the end of Key Stage Two at St Peter’s pupils are able to:

• Give a theologically informed and thoughtful account of Christianity as a living and diverse faith.
• Show an informed and respectful attitude to religions and world views in their search for God and meaning.
• Engage in meaningful and informed dialogue with those of other faiths and none.
• Reflect critically and responsibly on their own spiritual, philosophical and ethical convictions.

Religious Education is a key opportunity for children to develop morally, spiritually, socially and culturally. In RE lessons and our collective worship programme children are invited to reflect upon their personal responses to issues, consider other people’s responses and appreciate that for some people belief in a spiritual dimension is important. We encourage children to consider the answers offered by the faith groups to questions of meaning, purpose and problems within our society and their own experience.

Religious Education strongly supports the school’s citizenship programme by introducing pupils to the significance of belonging to a community, the diversity of communities in the wider communities, faith rules and their application to moral and ethical issues and cultural influences on religious practice.

Spiritual development within RE enriches and encourages the pupils’ discovery of God the creator, of their ‘inmost being’ and of the wonder of the environment. Moral development is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, which offer pupils a secure foundation stone on which to make decisions and build their lives.

Social development enriches pupils’ understanding of what it means to live in a Christian community where Jesus’ command to love one another is put into practice. Cultural development provides opportunities to develop an understanding of Christianity as a worldwide, multi-cultural faith that has an impact on the lives of millions of people.

RE in EYFS 

The areas of learning and development covered by the EYFS Units in this syllabus are:

• communication and language
• personal, social and emotional development
• literacy
• understanding the world
• expressive arts and design

Early Learning Goals

The content of the EYFS units in this syllabus contribute to the attainment of the following early learning goals

Communication and Language

ELG: Listening, Attention and Understanding

Children at the expected level of development will

• listen attentively and respond to what they hear with relevant questions, comments and actions when being read to and during whole class discussions and small group interactions.
• make comments about what they have heard and ask questions to clarify their understanding.
• hold conversation when engaged in back-and-forth exchanges with their teacher and peers.

 ELG: Speaking

Children at the expected level of development will:

• participate in small group, class and one-to-one discussions, offering their own ideas, using recently introduced vocabulary.
• offer explanations for why things might happen, making use of recently introduced vocabulary from stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems when appropriate.
• express their ideas and feelings about their experiences using full sentences.

Personal Social and Emotional Development

ELG: Self-Regulation

Children at the expected level of development will

• show an understanding of their own feelings and those of others and begin to regulate their behaviour accordingly.

ELG: Building Relationships

Children at the expected level of development will

• work and play cooperatively and take turns with others.
• form positive attachments to adults and friendships with peers.
• show sensitivity to their own and to others’ needs.

Literacy

 ELG: Comprehension

Children at the expected level of development will

• demonstrate understanding of what has been read to them by retelling stories and narratives using their own words and recently introduced vocabulary.

ELG: Writing

Children at the expected level of development will

• write simple phrases and sentences that can be read by others.

Understanding the world

ELG: Past and Present

Children at the expected level of development will

• talk about the lives of the people around them and their roles in society.
• know some similarities and differences between things in the past and now, drawing on their experiences and what has been read in class.
• understand the past through settings, characters and events encountered in books read in class and storytelling.

ELG: People, Culture and Communities

Children at the expected level of development will

• describe their immediate environment using knowledge from observation, discussion, stories, non-fiction texts and maps.
• know some similarities and differences between different religious and cultural communities in this country, drawing on their experiences and what has been read in class.
• explain some similarities and differences between life in this country and life in other countries, drawing on knowledge from stories, non-fiction texts and, when appropriate, maps.

Expressive Arts and Design

 ELG: Creating with Materials

Children at the expected level of development will

• share their creations, explaining the process they have used.
• make use of props and materials when role playing characters in narratives and stories.

ELG: Being Imaginative and Expressive

Children at the expected level of development will

• Invent, adapt and recount narratives and stories with peers and their teacher.

Taken from the Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage Setting the standards for learning, development and care for children from birth to five Published: 31 March 2021 Effective: 1 September 2021 DfE