RE

RE Curriculum Overview

RE Curriculum Rationale:
 Light Years School believes that pupils should:

• Be engaged, inspired, challenged, and equipped with the knowledge and skills to explore difficult philosophical questions.
• Develop an understanding of different religious beliefs and be encouraged to reflect on their own ideas and way of living.
• Be supported to question and combat prejudice, appreciate diversity, and promote the integral values of tolerance and respect.
• Be guided to establish British values and develop their spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development.
• Recognise that RE has an important role in preparing for adult life, employment, and lifelong learning.
• Develop a wide range of skills including enquiry, interpretation, evaluation, and reflection through high quality RE teaching.
• Be encouraged to participate in philosophical discussions and explore their own ideas and beliefs in a classroom environment where they feel heard, respected and understood.

RE Curriculum Intent:
Our RE curriculum is designed to engage and enthuse learners.  We believe that it is an essential area of study which ensures that children are well prepared for life in a world where there are a multitude of viewpoints.  We enable the children to make their own informed decisions and equip them to have the confidence to voice their views.  It is a subject for all pupils, whatever their own family background and personal beliefs and practices. 
 
We aim to develop pupils’ understanding of world faiths and other beliefs by exploring their commonality and diversity.  There is both depth and breadth of study.   The RE curriculum is about ‘belonging’.  It aims to nurture pupils’ awareness of diversity as well as sensitivity to the questions and challenges that different views and cultures can present. 
 
We want our children to enjoy RE and develop resilient responses to misunderstandings, stereotyping and division. We will offer the children a place where difficult or ‘risky’ questions can be tackled within a safe but challenging context. 
RE nurtures SMSC development and pupils’ understanding of diversity.  The children discuss challenging questions about meaning and purpose in life, beliefs about God, ultimate reality, issues of right and wrong and what it means to be human.  A holistic approach to Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural development (SMSC), British Values, and Community Cohesion focuses on preparing pupils for life in the 21st century. 
 
We provide our children with religious literacy where they will develop their knowledge and understanding of Christianity, other religious traditions and world views and explore their responses to life's challenges. This gives pupils the knowledge and skills to flourish both within their own community and as members of a diverse and global society.
 
We help our pupils prepare for their future by:

• Developing awareness of the fundamental questions raised by human experiences, and of how religious teachings can relate to them.
• Responding to such questions by referring to the teachings and practices of religions and other belief systems, relating them to their own understanding and experience.
• Reflecting on their own beliefs, values, and experiences in the light of their study.

 
RE Curriculum Implementation:
We follow the Living Difference IV syllabus, the agreed syllabus for Hampshire Schools.
“Living Difference IV seeks to introduce children and young people to what a religious way of looking at and existing in the world may offer in leading one’s life, individually and collectively.  It recognises and acknowledges that the question as to what it means to lead one’s life with such an orientation can be answered in a number of qualitatively different ways”. Living Difference IV December 2021

The children are taught RE through concepts that are familiar to them and that they have already met through their own life experience so far. We follow a 5 step Cycle of Inquiry (Communicate, Apply, Enquire, Contextualise and Evaluate) and explore concepts with the children from their first-hand experience before applying them to religious ideas. Concepts such as Welcoming, Thanking, Light, Celebrating, and golden thread concepts such as Love, Belonging, Special and Community are explored in our aspirational curriculum.
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Our Curriculum enables pupils to develop a rich knowledge and deep understanding of the Christian faith. They will also learn about Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism.
 
RE Curriculum Impact:
Our RE curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. 
The children make progress by knowing more, remembering more and being able to do more. They transfer and embed key concepts into their long-term memory and apply them fluently.
 
 We measure the impact of our curriculum in the following ways:

• Children demonstrate a positive attitude towards people of any religion and show an understanding of cultural beliefs different to their own.
• They demonstrate respectful behaviour to all, and this is transferable outside of school in the wider community and beyond.
• Assessing children’s understanding of each unit’s linked vocabulary before and after the unit is taught.
• Images and videos of the children’s learning.
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Pupil’s books are scrutinised and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work.
• Marking of written work in books.

Subject Policy