Intent

At Calmore Junior School, we aim to deliver high quality Religious Education which is based on the Living Difference lV, the agreed syllabus for Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle of Wight.

Through RE we hope to engage, inspire, challenge and encourage children to ask questions about the world and to reflect their own beliefs, values and experiences.   We wish to develop their knowledge of the world’s faiths, and their understanding and awareness of the beliefs, values and traditions of other individuals, societies, communities and cultures including non-religious way of looking at and existing in the world.  We want the RE our children learn to be exiting, engaging, enquiring, challenging, reflective and enjoyable.

Implementation

We ensure that our RE covers the depth and breadth required by the Agreed Syllabus, Living Difference lV.  Our children study Christianity in every year group and in addition to this, Hinduism, Islam and Sikhi faiths in years 3 and 4 and Islam and Buddhist faiths in years 5 and 6.  A further unit of study of a non-religious world view (Humanist) is taught in Years 4 and 6. A unit of RE is taught each half term.  RE teaching follows a process of enquiry into concepts.  RE lessons often include Philosophy for children, critical thinking, learning from believers (visitors, film clips) and opportunities to unpack concepts through drama and art.  Our RE helps us to learn about diversity in the UK and around the world. 

Our RE topics will include our curriculum principles:

Enrichment/Enjoyment

Depth and Challenge Each RE unit of work develops skills through the conceptual enquiry model of learning: enquire, contextualise, evaluate, communicate and apply. 

Quality Outcome which gives purpose to the learning. This may be an art gallery, leaflet, poem, dramatization, description or explanation. 

Personalisation This may be giving the children the choice of outcome or how to present their work.  It may be a line of enquiry that a particular group may wish to research.

Connections Children will be encouraged to make links with prior RE learning.  There may be links with drama, English, art, history and geography.

Relevant to our children and context Children visit places of worship local to them and visitors are invited to share their knowledge and experience. 

Purposeful

Enquiry based/igniting curiosity Children will be given opportunities to ask questions and to discuss and debate searching questions. (P4C)

Impact

At the end of Key Stage 2 we want our children to:

Access vocabulary to help them discuss, recall knowledge and understand religion in society.  Develop knowledge and understanding of some aspects of the Christian, Hindu and Muslim faiths.  Reflect on and relate their learning in RE to their own experience.

 Visit local places of worship and speak to visitors of different faiths. 

Reflect on their own values and those of a believer, respecting their right to hold different beliefs from their own. 

Understand different ways of life and other people’s ways to express meaning. 

Discuss issues and challenge prejudice. 

Ask and have the skills to answer ultimate and ethical questions from their viewpoint and that of a believer. 

Our ongoing skills development includes religious tolerance, investigation, interpretation, reflection, evaluation, analysis, supplication, application, expression, self-understanding, communication and problem solving.