RE is a distinctive but core part of our curriculum. It is balanced and promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils and prepares them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.

In our school we use Understanding Chrisitanity, together with the Derbyshire Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education. The curriculum content is delivered through topics within this syllabus and resource, which also ensures that children develop the necessary skills and language to be able to meet the criteria ‘Learning about religion’ and ‘Learning from religion’. The programme sets out specifically the topics and skills to be taught in Key Stage 1, lower Key Stage 2 and Upper Key Stage 2.

We teach R.E. creatively and wherever possible take a practical approach to engage children in hands on learning, through experiential learning – touching artefacts, exploring places of worship and celebrating festivals. We teach in this way to ensure that our children develop transferable skills that link to learning across the range of primary subjects. We encourage children to be inquisitive, make links and pose questions in order to begin to understand the relevance and importance of the major world religions.

Christingle 

Each year we hold a Christingle service in our church. We learn all about the origins of Christingle from a class in school.

The Children also make their own Christingles in school to be taken home and lit with their grown-ups. 

Diwali

We have been finding out about the festival of Diwali in school. 

We started with a worship where we entered through a path of lights, we heard the story of Rama and Sita and we looked at some traditional clothes (Mrs Redfearn even wore a sari) and we finished with some Bollywood dancing!

We continued to look at the festival in class. Here are some of the beautiful Rangoli patterns Year 5/6 created on our playground.