Religious Education

• Build a strong sense of their own value, identity, and beliefs.
• Know about and have respect for a range of different faiths and religious and non- religious world views.
• To show understanding about why different faiths and world views have the practices and beliefs that they have.
• Know that life is precious and that it is important to cherish themselves and others.

Importance to Bearwood Primary and Nursery pupils and local links:

Throughout their time at Bearwood, children will learn about the theology, practices and festivals in Christianity, Islam, Sikhism, Hinduism, and Judaism.

The RE curriculum aims to ignite children’s interest in different religious and non-religious world views/faiths and have knowledge of the key concepts, preparing them with essential knowledge throughout their education. This begins with EYFS where the foundation is laid through a child centred approach, promoting the understanding that we and our families are all different and celebrate events in life in differing ways, and progresses through to key stage 1 and 2.

To enable our children to understand the impact of different world views and faiths in their own community we have regular visitors to talk about their faith and their festivals. We have made a close link to the local church, St Barnabas Church, and children partake in Harvest, Christmas and Easter celebrations either at the local church or through assemblies in school lead by the Vicar. Lessons across the school are also supported by the vicar, other members of St Barnabas Church and members of other world views/faith communities, which bring the subject to life for the children.

The RE units have been carefully chosen to cover as wide-ranging content as possible without compromising depth, breadth, and coherence. They are progressive throughout the Key stages and offer challenge. Our curriculum has been developed from ‘Understanding Christianity’ and ‘Discovery’ schemes of work. Each unit plan includes lessons which teach knowledge and explore the impact of belief on everyday life, and lessons for the children to discuss their opinions and ideas based on this knowledge.

The RE curriculum has been designed to be both knowledge-rich and coherently sequenced with repeated encounters in different contexts. Knowledge means not only substantive knowledge of the theology of the faiths or world views, but also knowledge of substantive concepts in RE such as ‘prayer’, ‘the afterlife’ and festivals and disciplinary concepts such as significance and interpretation.