Curriculum Intent: Religious Education

Possibilities - To have high aspirations and know all of the opportunities available to them.

Growth - To recognise and celebrate their own individual journey, understanding their own uniqueness and strengths and those of others.

Communication - To have high levels of oracy; having a rich and wide vocabulary to be able to explain their own ideas and thinking and be able to collaborate and respond to others.

Whole School Curriculum vision for Religious Education
Possibilities To have high aspirations	To broaden their awareness of the richness and diversity in the world, thereby awakening their understanding of the opportunities available to them and foster an acceptance and excitement towards cultural diversity.
Growth To recognise and celebrate their own individual journey	To develop self-awareness through enquiring, interpreting, and reflecting emphatically and compassionately.
Communication To have high levels of oracy	To have the confidence to freely express ideas, feelings, and opinions empathetically to individuals who hold different beliefs from their own.

Implementation:

Our pupils should be able to organise their knowledge, skills and understanding into the following threshold concepts:

• Understand beliefs and values
• Understand practices and lifestyles
• Understand how beliefs are conveyed
• Reflect

These key concepts underpin the children’s learning through the year groups from Reception to Year 2. This enables pupils to reinforce and build upon prior learning, make connections and develop subject specific language. 

The vertical accumulation of knowledge and skills from Years R to 2 is mapped as follows:

Progression in Threshold Concepts The procedural and semantic knowledge pupils need to understand the threshold concepts
Threshold Concepts		Reception Step - Foundations to Basic	Year 1 Step - Basic	Year 2 Step - Advancing to Deep
Understanding beliefs and values		Awareness and understanding of some religious events	Identify key religious events, using subject specific vocabulary to demonstrate understanding
Understanding practices and lifestyles		Awareness of differences between personal and other cultures	Knowledge of different practices and lifestyles with an ability to compare and contrast
Understand how beliefs are conveyed		Awareness of beliefs through cultural stories	Introduction of bible, scriptures and readings	Recognise religious symbols and literature
Reflect		Communicate family events to peers and show an ability to listen	Engaging and responding to show an understanding	Mindfully reflect through questioning and discussion

Threshold Concepts	End Points
Understand beliefs and values	By the end of Year 2... All children will have developed their social and communication skills through RE. They will understand a fundamental set of beliefs and practices and have an awareness of the differences between themselves and others.                            They will be able to reflect, discuss and show empathy towards others and have a large appreciation of other people’s lifestyles and the choices they make. They will have an understanding of different types of religious literature and be familiar with different scriptures, also showing recognition of religious symbols.
Understand practices and lifestyles
Understand how beliefs are conveyed
Reflect	Their confidence in questioning will be strengthened, also providing them with a valuable insight into the world they live in as individuals and as members of groups.

Impact

Assessment

Through the explicit teaching of the RE knowledge and skills, both the teachers and the pupils assess their learning continuously throughout the lesson. Our assessment systems enable teachers to make informed judgements about the depth of their learning and the progress they have made over time.   

Pupil Voice

Year 1:

"RE teaches me lots of different things”

“I enjoyed acting out parts of different characters in RE”

Year 2

“RE makes me think of things I don’t normally think about” 

Snapshots