Intent

At Laddingford we view excellent teaching of RE as a vital part of building community. It has a vital role in developing religious literacy and deepening pupils understanding of Christianity, in all its forms, and fostering appreciation and understanding of other faith traditions. We aim to ensure that the RE curriculum is challenging, dynamic and relevant to pupils of all ages and encourage the children to ask questions to develop their critical thinking and understanding of the religions and beliefs which form our society, whilst promoting respect and diversity.

 

We believe that it is important that RE contributes to other areas of education and experiences and plays an important part of the wider programme of spiritual, moral, social and cultural development:

• Spiritually, by exploring and growing their beliefs,  experiences and understanding of others’ views.
• Morally, by enabling children to develop their own informed values.
• Socially, by widening children’s understanding of their place within society and providing them with the tools to make positive changes and influences.
• Culturally, by enabling children to explore and appreciate Britain’s culture and systems, and develop positive attitudes towards diversity.

 

The values we promote; love, joy and peace, are paramount within the school community and are values which will be important throughout life. In all that we do we strive to share, encourage and demonstrate positive values with our children; in order that they understand them and strive to live by them.

 

Implementation

We follow the framework of the Kent agreed syllabus for RE which draws on the ‘Understanding Christianity’ Resource for teaching about the Christian Faith, but also ensures a broad coverage of other world religions. RE is taught weekly and children’s thoughts and reflections are captured in a class big book. We have a two year rolling programme of content, which has been arranged to be progressive, at times, teachers may need to dip into content from the previous year if prior knowledge is required for a particular unit and children have not yet covered that in the cycle.  A more detailed progression in knowledge and skills is available on our school website.

 

SEND and Vulnerable Pupils

As a school, we use a range of teaching strategies to allow all children to access the curriculum. We use the mainstream core standards to develop strategies, interventions and resources that can help support our children. Some examples used in RE are:

•          Teaching of key vocabulary

•          Review points within the lesson

•          Providing alternative methods of recording

•          Writing frames/adapted tasks if appropriate

•          Providing visual support

 

Impact

When children leave Laddingford they are able to talk confidently about religious beliefs. They will be able to express themselves clearly in respect to their own beliefs but will also be open to the beliefs of others and able to discuss these with knowledge and compassion.

As we have mixed age classes, we teach year 1,3 and 5 units one year then year 2,4 and 6 units the following year. There are occasional exceptions to this, where prior learning is required units may be slightly adapted.