Religious Education
Avonwood RE Policy: Click Here
United Learning Curriculum for Religion & Worldviews: Discovery RE
Subject Leader: Mrs Rich
Senior Leadership Team Link: Mrs Short
Subject Intent
We aim for all of our children to leave Avonwood equipped with the RE skills and knowledge that will enable them to be ready for the curriculum at KS3 and for life as an adult in the wider world. Our intent for the RE curriculum is that by using an enquiry based model, we can achieve the following for children at Avonwood:
- To develop critical thinking skills by knowing about, understanding, asking questions and reflecting about a range of religions and worldviews.
- To gain knowledge and empathy with people and their beliefs, religious or otherwise.
- To know about and understand a range of religions and worldviews.
- To respect ideas, religions and worldviews which may differ to our own.
- To have opportunities to gain cultural capital both within school and in the local community.
- To allow opportunities for moments of mindfulness and of awe and wonder.
We believe that children are free to make their own choices and decisions concerning religion and belief. RE lessons will not try to persuade them but rather inform and develop skills with which evaluation can take place. Through our curriculum, we hope for children to develop a secure understanding of the knowledge and concepts surrounding RE as well as developing positive attitudes to cultures and beliefs which vary from their own. The overall aim of our RE curriculum is to make RE a meaningful and relevant subject for all pupils.
Implementation
At Avonwood, we have chosen to use and follow the United Learning Religion and Worldviews Curriculum to help us construct a coherent and balanced RE curriculum where every year progression and continuity is enabled and enhanced. To get the most value from the United R&W Curriculum, we adhere to the sequencing and teaching the ‘what’ but adapt the ‘how’ and the lesson delivery to meet the needs of our pupils and to have more ownership over what and how we teach the lessons.
The United Curriculum for Religion & Worldviews provides all children, regardless of their background, with:
- Coherent and sequenced substantive knowledge of religion and worldviews represented in Britain and the wider world, selected to build pupils’ understanding through three vertical concepts. These vertical concepts build a thematic narrative and provide context across diverse worldviews, as well as using small steps to help pupils gain a deep understanding of complex, abstract ideas:
- Sacrifice - Giving something up for the benefit of someone else is a recurring concept across religious & non-religious worldviews and takes many different forms. What motivates human action and what are the societal and personal consequences?
- Knowledge & Meaning - One of the unique qualities of human intelligence through time has been our quest for knowledge and meaning. How have religion and belief impacted on humanity’s search for “Truth”? How do beliefs impact human behaviour? What is it reasonable to believe?
- Human Context - Human beings exist in, and are influenced by, their place in time and their geographical, political and social context (Person, Time & Place). Everyone is different, so how have our diversities been influenced by our personal context? What influences a personal worldview?
- A Worldviews approach provides opportunities for all pupils to see themselves reflected in the curriculum, but also to be taken beyond their own experiences. The Religion & Worldviews curriculum teaches pupils about diversity within and between beliefs, cultures and worldviews from across the world, and seeks to teach the skills and knowledge to hold respectful and informed conversations about religion and belief; to be religiously literate.
- A conscious inclusion of vocabulary and substantive content that recognises the need to decolonise teaching materials in a meaningful and accessible way.
- A scholarly approach to the core disciplinary knowledge of theology, philosophy and social sciences, developing pupils’ ability to hold the types of conversation and to apply the methods and processes of theologians, philosophers and social scientists.
A curiosity and openminded approach to the worldviews of others and a reflective consciousness of their own worldview
Impact
Our RE Curriculum is high quality, well-sequenced and is planned to demonstrate progression.
Assessing impact is assessing how well pupils have learned the required knowledge from the implemented curriculum.
It is not about lots of tests, or meticulously comparing pupils’ outcomes at the start and end of each unit.
If pupils can keep up with a well-sequenced curriculum that has progression built in, they are making progress!
The United Curriculum has this progression built in, and so teachers and subject leads just need to be confident that pupils are keeping up with it.
This can be done through:
Formative assessment in lessons
There are opportunities for formative assessment in the lesson slides provided, and teachers should continually adapt their lesson delivery to address misconceptions and ensure that pupils are keeping up with the content.
Books and pupil-conferencing
Talking to pupils about their books allows you to assess how much of the curriculum content is secure. These conversations are used most effectively to determine whether pupils have a good understanding of the vertical concepts, and if they can link recently taught content to learning from previous units. (They should not be used to assess whether pupils can recall information, as low-stakes quizzes can gather this information more efficiently).