RE

RE Intent Statement

At Woodlands we are a multicultural school celebrating children from a diverse range of backgrounds. With this in mind, the quality of education in RE at Woodlands is crucial to developing well rounded, respectful and tolerant children. It is the aim of our inclusive RE curriculum to ensure our children receive high quality provision that is engaging, interactive and cross curricular and most importantly develops a passion for the subject. We do this via visiting local places of worship, highlighting key festivals and celebrations throughout the year and inviting in local religious leaders as well as guest speakers to widen their understanding.

We feel RE teaches our children:

• To have a wider understanding of all the main religions, their teaching and traditions,
making links to and celebrating their similarities and differences and developing their
capacity to appreciate, respect and reflect upon the areas they study.

• To develop an inquiring mind for searching and questioning; for exploring and
responding to challenging questions raised by religion and worldviews.

• To develop an understanding of British Values (democracy, rule of law, individual
liberty, mutual respect, tolerance of different faiths and beliefs) and what impact we
have as a citizen.

• To broaden their understanding of the important link between SMSC and RE and how
this shapes them to become reflective, kind and understanding young people.

• To develop knowledge and exploration of non-faiths e.g. humanism, atheistic and
agnostic and their responses to human experiences.

• To challenge pupils to examine their own standing in life, to deepen their personal
faith, commitment and respect that of others.

Religious Education Implementation

At Woodlands, a cross-curricular ‘themed’ approach to planning is used across all subjects- with clear rationales and contextualised learning to support the children in their lessons. RE naturally has many links to subjects that are taught at Woodlands, such as P4C (philosophy for learning) and PSHE and through English and Reading, with the use of creation stories and many stories from other cultures.

Teaching in a cross-curricular approach allows the children to re-visit key skills across the curriculum, with high expectations being set in all subjects. In RE it also allows the children to continue to develop their knowledge and understanding of their own and/or the religions of others, year on year.

The long term plan sets out exactly which units are expected to be taught for each year group, each half term. In addition to this, there are planning prompts on the LTP as well as references to pages on the Agreed Redbridge Syllabus to support teachers. Teachers are able to used additional teaching materials and resources from other platforms online and website subscriptions such as ‘Espresso Primary’ to further support the quality of teaching in RE. Religious artefacts are used in all lessons, where appropriate, to support the children in having first-hand experiences of handling artefacts as well as developing values such as care, compassion, kindness and mutual respect. Teachers are models for demonstrating how to handle the artefacts whilst maintaining respect for the religions. The children are able to see the artefacts up close for the depth of leaning and understanding. This is a unique opportunity for children to handle resources from a range of religions.

Stories from other cultures and faiths, often draw upon the teachings of creation stories. The children are exposed to a range of different stories and encouraged to make links between the religious to develop mutual respect and commonalities that people of faith can share. This can be linked through the stimulus being introduced in reading of English lessons.

Each year there is a trip to visit a place of worship of the faith that is being studied within that year group. During these trips the children are again being encouraged to develop a greater understand of the wider world whilst focusing on the key drivers for our school. These trips offer opportunities for the children to have moments of ‘awe and wonder’ to allow them to develop their understanding of the wider world.

Class teacher’s use assessment descriptors that have been selected from the agreed syllabus. These focus specifically on the units that the children are taught each term. Class teachers will use these and the prompts on the LTP to plan and teach. The objectives are then assessed through marking that meets the requirements of the policy to assess the progress of the children.

The outcomes in the children’s books are varied. There are a range of ways in which work should be recorded and not all of these should or need to be written. There is a greater focus on developing more creative ways to record the children’s learning. Photographs are used to document the creative ways in which teachers are teaching and enriching the children’s knowledge of RE.