Subject Leader - Mrs Cooper

RELIGION AND WORLDVIEWS

INTENT

Our Religious Education (R.E.) Curriculum is designed to ensure that all children leave St. Paul’s with an awareness and understanding of their own personal worldview and the positionality that shapes it. They will become increasingly able to hold conversations about their own worldview and those of others. They will be wise interpreters of the knowledge they encounter through exploration of diverse, embodied lived expressions of worldviews.

Our R.E. Curriculum is designed to ensure that all children leave St. Paul’s with a thorough understanding of the main teachings of Christianity as well as a good understanding of the other religions and worldviews.

Through our curriculum we want to ensure the beliefs of children from all faiths, or no faith are valued, respected, shared within our community and provide an opportunity for a growth in each child’s experience of the world and their own worldview.

Our curriculum aims to establish learning in R.E as a journey where children feel safe and secure to collaborate and work in a classroom of inquiry, encountering and enquiring about philosophical concepts, moral dilemmas and a range of worldviews including the views of non-theists.

Our R. E. Curriculum covers substantive, disciplinary and personal knowledge.

As a Church of England school, we recognise the importance of promoting values which reflect those of Christianity through our R.E. teaching.

Alongside this our teaching of R.E. supports children and staff to develop new skills:

Reflectivity: Taking time to think about our own worldview lens and what we have read, watched, listened to, learned, encountered in RE and what we are bringing into the lesson with us.

Reflexivity: Being able to identify our own experiences as learners (and teachers), to become more conscious, open-minded, and self-critical in our own approach to learning in RE, asking questions about our own biases and assumptions as we learn.                                                                              Positionality: Understanding our own position in approaching the subject matter. The historical, social and geographical context that helps to create our identity in terms of race, class, gender and sexuality. How identity influences, and potentially biases, our understanding of the world.

IMPLEMENTATION

R.E. is taught discretely in single age groups with all groups in each phase being taught RE at the same time. Curriculum time is allocated to RE on a weekly basis or according to the curriculum map, in some blocks depending on the enquiry question and year group.

Teaching covers the objectives set out in the Coventry and Warwickshire Agreed Syllabus (CWAS) produced by the Coventry and Warwickshire SACRE supported by Understanding Christianity objectives. (UC)

Understanding Christianity is a scheme of learning which is used to teach children about Christianity. For our systematic and thematic units including world religions and worldviews we use the SACRE CWAS units

Understanding Christianity lessons primarily focus on the theology behind Christianity, with Christianity being seen as a global religion. Children are encouraged to question and explore as well as to ‘dig deeper’ behind extracts from the Bible. Units are structured to enable children to make sense of a Biblical text and to make connexions to their own worldviews and those of others.

CWAS units enable children to engage with religious and non-religious worldviews. Lessons provide opportunities to explore where beliefs come from, how they have changed, and how they are applied in different contexts. These units enable children to gain core substantive knowledge pupils are also taught to be enquiring and to approach units with curiosity, learning together.

Children at St Paul’s learn R.E from a range of sources including, where possible, visits and visitors from a range of worldviews, studying holy texts, artefacts, artwork, audio, and visual resources. Pupils are supported to participate in drama, discussion, hot-seating activities amongst others.

IMPACT

Assessment for learning strategies are employed to enable teachers to identify the strength of understanding of the children.  Teachers use this information to make adaptations to their planning and delivery of lessons to meet the needs of the children.

During lessons teachers may also change the focus of the lesson to ensure that children are supported and challenged.

Worldviews are ascertained at regular points through each of the CWAS units as well as at the beginning of each school year.

Verbal and written feedback is used to support children in understanding more about RE.

The R.E subject leader and other SLT or Governor responsible for R.E hold termly pupil voice meetings with a range of pupils from Years 1 to 6 to ascertain their progress in RE as well as to survey worldviews.

R.E. books and portfolios are monitored by SLT termly.