Religious Education
Easter Celebrations!
Easter is a very important celebration for us as a church school. We had a beautiful Easter service in school, in which Y5/6 read the Easter story and each class sang an Easter hymn. Thank you for entering the egg competition and all the entries can be seen above.
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.
Religious education contributes dynamically to children and young people’s education by provoking 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. In RE they learn about and from religions and worldviews in local, national and global contexts, to discover, explore and consider different answers to these questions. They learn to weigh up the value of wisdom from different sources, to develop and express their insights in response, and to agree or disagree respectfully.
In our school we use NATRE (National Association of Teachers of Religious Education) which is designed to be knowledge based, 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’.
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.
Religious education two year long term plan. 2024-2025 is cycle A
Our trip to the Derby Open Centre
Varied religions
As part of Understanding Christianity ,and being citizens of the world, we enjoy studying other religions other than Christianity. As a school community we are made up of different religions and as a Church of England School we embrace that and learn from one another. In our scheme of work we look more closely at Islam, Judaism and Hinduism and the children benefit enormously from learning about different cultures and beliefs.
Here are some of the beautiful Rangoli patterns Year 5/6 created on our playground when we celebrated the Diwali festival of light. These patterns are to welcome guests at Diwali and to encourage the goddess Lakshmi to enter homes to bring prosperity, good health and luck.
Our 'BIG' questions
Each term we try and answer an enquiry question that then meets the objectives of the curriculum. This encourages the children to ask more questions, discuss the topic and maybe think a little deeper than they normally would when approaching RE. This allows the children to understand the greater world around them and helps them to realise that they are all citizens of the the same world.
Our enquiry questions in key stage 1 include : 'Who is a Christian and what do they believe?' 'Who made our world?' In key stage 2 we have used the enquiry questions: 'What matters most to Christians and Humanists? What does it mean to be a Muslim in Britain today?' These allow the child to be empathetic and start to understand the terms prejudice and discrimination; thus encouraging children to challenge their own prejudices and those around them.
Our church
We regularly visit St. George's church and are really lucky that it is across the road, so we have easy access. The school has close links with parents and the community and will have open celebrations where parents and the wider community can attend. These include our end of year service for our school leavers, Harvest and Easter celebrations, as well as Christingle and Christmas services.
Our children are familiar with Fr. Owain Mitchell through bi-weekly worships at school and from our services and celebrations at the church. This makes for good links between ourselves and the church.