Religious Education

Intent:

To encourage students to develop empathy, respect and tolerance for the world we live in. As a Humanities subject, RE is concerned with the study of human beliefs; we encourage students to be open minded and reflect on the many different beliefs that are held within the world.

RE explores big questions about life, to find out what people believe and what difference this makes to how they live. RE helps students to make sense of religion and belief, reflecting on their own ideas and ways of living.

This academic subject also allows students to reflect on the impact that religious belief has on morality and ethics, whilst also deliberating on life's ultimate questions. Students are encouraged to learn from and about religion and also share their own views and opinion. We intend to develop analytical thinkers who will be able to question and reflect on knowledge and the world they live in. We intend to deliver a systemic approach in the study of individual religions before applying it to a thematic study, in this way we allow students to study a spiral curriculum based around core concepts. Students will encounter key concepts multiple times as part of their programme of study. This will allow solid foundations to be built in Year 7 and Year 8 before starting GCSE.

In Year 9 we start the GCSE Course, which encompasses the above, but as we have less curriculum time than other subjects at KS4, we believe it is important to start the content in Year 9 in order to have enough time to cover the curriculum. This also allows for sequencing as well as interleaving information, recall and retrieving information.

Implementation:  

We aim to develop students recall and knowledge through Talk for Writing (T4W) strategies. We use strategies such as warming up the words and text mapping to create memory hooks and help students embed knowledge. Through T4W we develop student’s literacy skills, Boxing up can be used in a variety of manners in order to help students develop extended writing and their ability to access and answer longer answered questions. Using these strategies regularly in lessons will also help with students recall and their ability to retrieve key information.

In order to develop empathy and respect, we ask students to explore how religion impacts life, for example they will study the 5k’s in Sikhism and be asked to explain how these impact a believer’s life, encouraging them to show empathy. 

We ask students to engage in debates over the existence of God and life and use strategies developed by Kagen, which ensure all students have to take part in group discussion and be involved in discussing their opinion. Students have to explore arguments for and against different beliefs, they begin to plan for and tackle answer questions asking students to debate different views in order to develop their analytical skills. 

The use of hot and cold tasks also allows students to monitor their own progress as well as receiving written and verbal feedback from their teachers, in this way they are constantly aware of where they are at and what they need to do to improve in the subject.

Impact:  

Students develop skills which enable them to become the learners we aim for them to be in our Intent Statement. They are able to engage in debate about philosophical arguments. They can talk about religious beliefs and actions with respect and empathy. They can approach questions of morality in an open minded way.