RE

The aim of teaching Religious Education (RE) is to provide students with the knowledge and critical thinking skills to explore a range of religious and non-religious worldviews. This equips students to understand the diverse society they live in, reflect on their own beliefs, and engage in informed and respectful dialogue. The key objectives are: Encouraging critical and reflective thinking, Developing respect for diversity, Promoting personal development, Building religious literacy, Preventing prejudice/extremism and avoiding indoctrination.

Our intention is to foster pupils’ spiritual, moral, social, and cultural (SMSC) development by encouraging them to explore challenging questions about life’s meaning, beliefs, and ethics, and to develop respect, empathy, and an appreciation for diverse religious and non-religious worldviews. RE aims to provide systematic knowledge and understanding of traditions, develop critical thinking and evaluation skills, and promote open-mindedness and dialogue in a diverse society.

RE is taught every other half term. The Norfolk Agreed Syllabus guidelines are used to ensure children are given a broad and balanced experience of RE using the three key disciplines of Theology, Philosophy and Human/Social Sciences. We update our curriculum once a year, where applicable, to ensure that the children have good curriculum coverage in our mixed age year groups.

Learning is assessed in a variety of ways via the work children produce in their books, alongside the progress recorded in teacher assessments. Teachers will conduct ‘Book Looks’ to review the work taught and the progress made by the children. Evidence will be written, photographic and expressed through discussion and the arts. Our EYFS pupils will have their learning recorded on Tapestry, the online learning journal. We also have a whole school RE folder, which is an ongoing working document and evidences the range of activities and multi-disciplinary approach that we have towards our teaching. Pupils will be given an opportunity to reflect on their learning in RE via our ‘Pupil Voice’ sessions while also assessing themselves on each piece of work using our learning strips.

• Children have opportunities to engage with RE via events within our local community.
• Children take part in extra-curricular trips that have a focus on RE.
• Children have the opportunity to engage with different faiths via visits to our school and through music, art and drama.