RE Intent, Implementation, and Impact

With God all things are possible. Matthew 19-24

Our Pathway:

Working together as one, through the affirmation of God’s love within a distinctively Christian ethos, we aim to educate for:

• Wisdom and Knowledge
• Hope and Aspiration
• Community and
• Living Well Together
• Dignity and Respect
• Promote a positive, open and honest culture which embraces and nurtures these.

We ensure Pytchley CE Primary is inclusive, serves the local community and welcomes all: children of the Christian faith, of other faiths or of no faith.

Inclusivity

We ensure our curriculum is accessible to all.

Intent (the what)

In our Trust the curriculum is broadly defined as the knowledge students are expected to learn (including spiritual, moral, social and cultural) through the totality of experiences provided in our children’s primary schooling.  By knowledge we mean facts, concepts and rules (declarative knowledge: to know that…), and procedural knowledge (skills: to know how….) acquired through experience and /or education. 

We aim for our knowledge-rich curriculum to enable:

• Sustained mastery (and a greater understanding for those who are capable) of subject specific key knowledge that we want the children to acquire;
• Sustained mastery of knowledge that pupils will need to be able to make sense of the world by providing rich cultural capital.

We deliver the National Curriculum 2014 throughout Key Stage 1 and 2 providing pupils with ‘an introduction to the essential knowledge that they need to be educated citizens and to the best that has been thought and said, helping to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement’.

The principle aim of our RE is to enable pupils to hold balanced and informed conversations about religion and belief.

This will help them to:

• Make sense of a range of beliefs
• Understand the impact of beliefs on lives
• Make connections between faiths and how faith is relevant in the world today.

We regard our RE curriculum as the progression model. We focus on knowledge progression within the context of themes or projects following Peterborough Diocese Agreed Syllabus, and by using Understanding Christianity. Hence, our long term aim is for our curriculum to be coherently planned, organised and structured with key concepts identified and prioritised, built upon and revisited.

Our curriculum reflects our local needs and context.  The curriculum meets the particular aims and values of our school by providing rich, creative experiences – indoors and out - which:

• promote and support mental and physical well-being in a digitally dominated world;
• foster a respect for cultural diversity within a global society;
• teach accountability through the values of love, respect, perseverance, honesty and forgiveness.

The Long Term coverage maps can be found on our website. In school, further detailed medium term planning is available, together with knowledge organisers. These provide the foundation of our RE curriculum.

Implementation (the how)

‘Learning is defined as an alteration in long-term memory. If nothing has been altered in long-term memory then nothing has been learned.’

                                                                                                                                                Sweller et al. 2011

In line with cognitive load theory we aim, through our teaching, to develop understanding by building well-developed schema: well organised, connected knowledge as opposed to a handful of unconnected facts. We, therefore, favour spaced and distributed learning, where knowledge is rehearsed for short periods over a longer period of time. We aim to ensure retrieval practice is built in to strengthen memory by:

• Providing overviews
• Outlining content to be covered and signalling transitions between different parts of the lesson;
• Calling attention to main ideas;
• Providing daily, weekly and monthly reviews.
• Re-teaching when necessary.

We regard teaching as effective when underpinned by Rosenshine’s ‘Principles of Instruction’ (see the Trust’s Teaching and Learning statement).  Effective questioning, effective use of formative assessment and adaptive, responsive teaching are regarded as key.

We regard the following teachers’ knowledge as essential: 

• pedagogical knowledge: teachers’ knowledge of effective teaching methods;
• content knowledge: teachers’ subject knowledge;
• pedagogical content knowledge: teachers’ knowledge of how to teach the particular subject / topic e.g. knowing the misconceptions that arise prior to teaching specific key knowledge.

Our RE curriculum:

• Makes sense to children
• Focusses on the core concepts
• Allows pupils to encounter broad and diverse examples of religion and world view
• Enables children to embed learning into long term memory
• Makes space for children’s own religious or non-religious world views
• Encourages children’s personal development, applying their learning to living

Our teaching of RE will take place through weekly timetabled lessons of no less than 60mins per week for all pupils. 60% of our overall teaching in RE will be focussed on Christianity including the development of Christian narrative. We use ‘Understanding Christianity’ to teach Christianity. Lessons are centred around these main concepts in Christianity referring to both the Old Testament and the New Testament:

• God
• Creation
• Fall
• People of God
• Incarnation
• Gospel
• Salvation
• Kingdom of God

Through these concepts, pupils encounter a range of biblical texts, placed within a wider theological context. They consider the nature of God and what it means for Christians to be in relationship with the Creator. They explore Christian understanding of the relationship between God and his people in the Old Testament, and make sense of messianic expectations and Christian belief in their fulfilment in Jesus. Pupils explore the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus, within this wider historical and theological context. They consider the present and future aspects of the Kingdom of God. Pupils examine the impact of these beliefs and their outworking in the lives of Christians, through (for example) celebrations, festivals, rituals, creative and spiritual expression, actions and activism, expressions of love and compassion, calls for justice and ethical responses.

To complement our teaching of Christianity, we also introduce pupils to other main world religions including:

• Judaism
• Islam
• Hinduism
• Sikhism

We use the non-statutory guidance in Peterborough Agreed Syllabus to plan these lessons, including opportunities for children to compare and contrast the experience of other religions with Christianity.

We are supported in our teaching by our local vicar who visits school at least fortnightly to lead Collective Worship and RE lessons.

Our pupils are given the opportunity to visit different denominational churches, a Hindu temple and a synagogue during their time at our school.

Impact

We measure this by the extent to which our aims, curriculum defined end points and strong outcomes are achieved as a result of our curriculum intent and implementation.

The vast majority of our pupils will have sustained mastery of key, detailed knowledge identified and some children will have a greater depth of understanding.

‘If a student has learnt the curriculum, they have made progress.’

Michael Fordham

We expect the vast majority of children to achieve a strong understanding of what it means to be a Christian and how faith and spirituality can affect and shape people’s lives. We expect that our children have learned tolerance and respect for people of all religions and none.