Religious Education (R.E)

 

RE at St James

At St James, we believe that it is highly important for all our pupils to learn about different faiths in order for them to understand the world around them. We believe that children are free to make their own choices and decisions concerning religion and belief. RE at St James, does not try to persuade but rather inform and develop the skills with which evaluation can take place whilst respecting their own culture and home life. It is very important to us that our RE curriculum reflects the local area whilst still upholding the Church of England values. We want to encourage children to share and discuss their own faith as well as give them the skills and understanding, to handling questions raised by religion and beliefs.

With this intent in mind, we have decided to follow the Discovery RE scheme of work where we have woven the dispositions from the Birmingham Agreed Syllabus into each unit.  Our daily collective worship is also centred around the dispositions taken from this syllabus.  This scheme of work uses an enquiry-based model, so that children’s critical thinking skills can develop and their knowledge and empathy with people and their beliefs and religions can be enhanced. At the start of each unit the children are given a key question to explore using a four step model. The four step model works as a cycle:

Step 1 Engagement: this steps starts by the children sharing and linking the big question to their own experiences. This bridges the human experience to the religion.

Step 2 Investigation: in this step the teacher guides the children through the enquiry, the children gain subject knowledge which has been carefully selected to assist their thinking about the key question.

Step 3 Evaluation: this steps draws together the children’s learning and their conclusions about the key question.

Step 4 Expression: in this step the children are taken back to Step 1, their own experience, to reflect on how this enquiry might have influenced their own starting points and beliefs.

Throughout our RE curriculum we encourage each child to be creative, imaginative, curious, debate their idea, have discussion and show independence. It plays an important role alongside other subjects in promoting a social awareness, British Values and making them aware of their rights and responsibilities as Global Citizen.

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