Religious Education (R.E)

Intent:

At Wansdyke, we believe that it is crucial that our children develop an understanding of RE, in contemporary Britain and the wider world, and how it impacts upon our community and people in the world. Our curriculum is developed in line with the National Curriculum guidance and the RE Today RE curriculum which is delivered in a way that is interesting, relevant to our children and links to other areas of learning, wherever possible. Our desire is that students gain an understanding of the diverse beliefs and religious practices of our faith communities, understand the non-religious view held by a number of people in our society, and respect the right of all people to make these very personal choices.  Children learn the knowledge and skills to become critical thinkers and will be able to identify, investigate and respond to a variety of issues and religious questions. We reflect the fact that religious traditions in Great Britain are in the main Christian, while taking account of the teaching and practices of the other principal religious traditions represented in Great Britain.

Our aim is that we inspire our children to become active and curious in regards to RE. We want our pupils to develop the tools to evaluate information about the world around them and make informed judgements based on this, and help them understand key features of the religions of the world, and how this shapes the world that they live in.

Implementation:

The school will implement a clear and comprehensive progression of skills as outlined in the non-statutory guidance in the National Curriculum.  Where applicable, links to other subjects will be made to develop effective learning experiences. RE is taught in a block, once a term, which allows the teacher to more effectively use formative assessment to address misconceptions and errors pupils may have had during the previous lesson and address these quickly. Children focus on a key question about a religion. The key question for the enquiry is such that it demands an answer that weighs up ‘evidence’ (subject knowledge) and reaches a conclusion based on this. This necessitates children using their subject knowledge and applying it to the enquiry question, rather than this knowledge being an end in itself. The RE Today scheme encourages the use of thinking skills, on personal reflection into the child’s own thoughts and feelings, on growing subject knowledge and nurturing spiritual development.  Skills and prior knowledge are built upon and revisited throughout the school and this enables children to develop a mastery approach to RE.

Pupils are to study in depth the religious traditions of the following:

Impact

Assessment of RE at Wansdyke is a multi- facetted approach. We need to recognise the limits of placing any summative judgement against the children’s knowledge of RE because the validity of this data is relatively low. Equally, we need to be wary of purely looking at the outcomes from within a lesson, and judge the performance of children, rather than what has been committed to long-term memory.

At the beginning of the unit, children are given an opportunity to record and discuss ideas they already have about the topic allowing this to inform teaching, adding in any necessary adaptations and a baseline for future progress.

The majority of our efforts within assessment should be towards formative assessment, in order that misconceptions and are addressed at the point they are made. Children are then re-assessed using the RE Today assessment sheets at the end of the unit, to allow teaching staff to gain an understanding of any misconceptions and weaker areas of learning.

Teachers use the assessment sheet in the floor books to record children who are working above and below the learning objective, allowing this to be addressed in future lessons.

Formative Assessment / Responsive Teaching: 

• ·Verbal responses from pupils within the lesson
• ·Written outcomes from the pupils’ work
• ·Retrieval practice at the start of each lesson

Summative Assessment:

• ·Multiple choice quizzes after a period of time
• ·Mind-maps after a period of time
• ·Comparison of work with exemplification
• ·Pupil interviews about topics covered
• ·Teacher judgement against RE skills progression

Pupil Conferencing

It is important that when assessing our impact, we refer back to the aims of our own curriculum. Whilst the assessment of knowledge and skills are addressed above, it is important we also look at how RE leads to achieving our School Aims.

Right of withdrawal

Pupils’ families and faith communities have the right to encourage religious nurture of the children, fostering their faith. It is the responsibility of the school to provide Religious Education for all its pupils.

Parents have the right to withdraw their children either partly or wholly from RE.  In addition, teachers have the right not to teach the subject. Our approach to RE, however, has been constructed in the hope that parents and teachers will rarely, if ever, wish to exercise their right of withdrawal.

As stated on our school website, those parents who wish to withdraw their child from RE lessons should inform the Headteacher in writing/contact the school office at their earliest convenience.

This policy has been adopted by the school in consultation with the RE Subject Leader and teaching staff.