Religious Education

Religious Education

Schooling deprived of religious insights is wretched education

Russell Kirk

At Heartwood, we believe that the purpose of RE is about religious literacy and aim to help pupils hold balanced and well-informed conversations about religion and belief. Consequently, RE intends to promote religious understanding and respect and to challenge prejudice, discrimination and stereotyping. We follow the Norfolk Agreed Syllabus (2019) and children in Years 1 to 6 use the enquiry approach to answer five ‘Big Questions’ each academic year. Each unit of work has a main focus of theology, philosophy or human/social sciences:

Year group	Enquiry One	Enquiry Two	Enquiry Three	Enquiry Four	Enquiry Five
Reception	Why is the word God so important to Christians? Christian	Why do Christians perform nativity plays at Christmas? Christian		Why do Christians put a cross in an Easter garden? Christian
Year One	What do my senses tell me about the world of religion and belief? Christian, Hindu, Jewish	How does a celebration bring a community together? Muslim, Christian	What do Jewish people remember on Shabbat? Jewish	What does the cross mean to Christians? Christian	How did the universe come to be? Hindu, Christian
Year Two	Why is light an important symbol for Christians Jews and Hindus? Christian, Jewish, Hindu	What does the nativity story teach Christians about Jesus? Christian	How do Christians belong to their faith family? Christian	How do Jewish people celebrate Passover (Pesach)? Jewish	Why do people have different views about the idea of God? Multi/Humanist
Year Three	How do people express commitment to a religion/ worldview in different ways? Hindu or Jewish/Sikh/ Christian	What is the Trinity? Christian	What is philosophy? How do people make moral decisions? Christian/Humanist	What do _____ believe about God? Muslim	What difference does being a _____ make to daily life? Muslim
Year Four	Where do religious beliefs come from? Christian	What do we mean by truth? Is seeing believing? Multi, including Sikh views on God as truth	How do/have religious groups contribute to society and culture? Hindu/Christian	Why is there so much diversity of belief within _____? Christian Includes some theological aspects	What does sacrifice mean? Multi/Humanist
Year Five	Is believing in God reasonable? Multi/Humanist	How has belief in _____ impacted on music and art through history? Christian/Muslim	What can we learn about the world/knowledge/ meaning of life from the great philosophers? Buddhist/Christian	What difference does the resurrection make to Christians? Christian	How do ____ make sense of the world? Hindu
Year Six	How and why does religion bring peace and conflict? Multi	How do _______ explain the suffering in the world? Buddhist	What does it mean to be human? Is being happy the greatest purpose in life? Humanist/Christian	Creation or science: conflicting or complementary? Christian/Humanist	How do beliefs shape identity for ______? Muslim (prepare for KS3)

As a Church School, we ensure that at least 51% of the RE curriculum taught is Christianity, but often more than this. The demographic of our school shows that many of our community have no religious beliefs and therefore we teach Humanism as a reference to living a good life with human values at the centre.

Enrichment

We visit Norwich Cathedral for different events with different year groups. We visit Christian Churches of different denominations. We have days for children to explore concepts in more detail: creation, salvation and incarnation. We believe that our children at Heartwood learn best through first hand experiences and we encourage visitors and visit throughout the year and also include Godly play.

We have a strong partnership with St. Peter and St. Paul’s Church and have created an annual enrichment timetable:

Making a Difference

As part of our Religious Education curriculum we discuss the importance of people's beliefs, respecting each other and our differences, and being able to learn from others. As well as this, pupils learn the values that Christians hold, and how these can be used in their everyday lives. By having an understanding of our own and others' beliefs, our pupils learn to respect and appreciate other people, their beliefs and life choices.

How we teach Religious Education

At Heartwood our Nursery and Reception classrooms thrive on excitement, curiosity and discovery, where language and communication are the foundations of play and adventure. Through the overt modelling and teaching of early philosophical skills, including thinking and talking, playing and storytelling, we provide children with the tools for genuine enquiry, equipping them for both now and the future learning.

The key skills we model, teach and the children learn and nurture from the beginning of EYFS are

Engagement with philosophical questions at their level. e.g., Should I share the cake?
Speaking skills e.g., explaining their own ideas
Listening skills e.g., responding relevantly to what other children say
Reasoning skills

To support our children we use question stems, such as ‘can you tell me why?’, ‘What do you think about…?’, ‘I really like…idea. What do you think?’

We teach RE through the Enquiry Process; Engage, Enquire, Explore, Evaluate, Express.

Ensuring all can access and flourish in Religious Education

RE Strategies to remove potential barriers in the curriculum.pdf

Spirituality in Religious Education at Heartwood

Spirituality in RE at Heartwood.pdf

KS1 and KS2 Religious Education National Curriculum

The Nicholas Hamond Academy

Our curriculum is designed to prepare the children for the next stages in their education in each subject. Our curriculum map plans to support the declarative and procedural knowledge needed for the children to access and thrive in RE in KS3.

TNHA Philosophy and RE Curriculum Plan