Religious Education​ at Stocksbridge Junior School

At Stocksbridge Junior School, we believe every child is a religious scholar. Our goal is to equip pupils with the knowledge and understanding of diverse religions, belief systems and cultural practices, enabling them to navigate an interconnected world and make positive contributions to society.

Through our high-quality religious education curriculum, we aim to instil ambition and confidence in our pupils, encouraging them to articulate their thoughts on significant human questions that religions address. Through the teaching of religious education, we will open children’s minds to different possibilities and alternative points of view they may encounter and promote the virtues of respect and empathy so that they are prepared to engage in a multi-religious and multi-secular society demonstrating tolerance, acceptance and unity.

Intent

At Stocksbridge Junior School, our curriculum is designed to cultivate an aptitude for dialogue, enabling pupils to engage positively in a diverse society. Pupils will explore various religions and worldviews through a range of experiences and disciplines, making progress by reflecting on the impact of religions and worldviews on contemporary life. They will gain and deploy the skills needed to interpret and evaluate evidence, texts and sources of wisdom and authority. As they articulate their personal beliefs, ideas, values, and experiences, they will learn to do so with clarity and respect for the differing views, values and lifestyles of others. Through our religious education curriculum, pupils will learn how to disagree respectfully and will become increasingly able to be reasonable in their responses to religions and worldviews. By using their skills of rationality and argument, we aim to foster an understanding, respect and tolerance towards the beliefs of others amongst our pupils.

This purpose is captured in the principal aim of religious education outlined by Sheffield Agreed Syllabus:

Elaborating on the principle aim of our religious education curriculum, we intend to ensure that all pupils achieve the below threefold aims of RE:

1. Make sense of a range of religious and non-religious beliefs.
2. Understand the impact and significance of religious and non-religious beliefs.
3. Make connections between religious and non-religious beliefs, concepts, practices and ideas studied.

Through achieving these three aims, we intend for our pupils to know more, and remember more by making progress in the following three key strands:

• Substantive knowledge: Pupils will gain a deep understanding of various religious and non-religious traditions.
• Ways of knowing: Pupils will develop disciplinary knowledge, learning how the substantive content has evolved, how to assess the accuracy and validity of different claims, and the methods used in their enquiries.
• Personal knowledge: Pupils will cultivate an appreciation of their own values and beliefs, exploring how these connect to both religious and non-religious traditions.

Religious education at Stocksbridge Junior School also contributes to the personal development of pupils, giving them opportunities to apply their learning to living. RE helps our pupils to develop their own understanding of the world and how to live, in the light of their learning, developing understanding, skills and attitudes. Our curriculum encourages respectful disagreement and facilitates connections between the ideas studied and the world around them, as well as their own personal worldviews. To prepare pupils for life in the 21^st century, our RE curriculum offers important opportunities to explore British Values and provides significant contributes to our pupils’ SMSC (social, moral, spiritual and cultural) development within each unit of enquiry.  This holistic approach aims to foster a well-rounded understanding and equip pupils with the tools they need to engage thoughtfully and responsibility in a diverse society.  

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Implementation

At Stocksbridge Junior School, we follow an enquiry-based approach using resources from the Sheffield Agreed Syllabus and Understanding Christianity. Religious education is taught weekly throughout the school year. Reflecting the religious make-up of Sheffield, each year group engages with six enquiries throughout the year: including the study of Christianity and at least one other principal religion represented in the UK (Hinduism, Islam or Judaism). In addition to this, opportunities to discuss and learn from non-religious world views are interwoven throughout the curriculum.

Religious education is taught through systematic and thematic units to build on learning by comparing the religions, beliefs and practices studied. To help pupils to develop a coherent understanding of several religions, pupils in each year group study one religion at a time before bringing together and comparing different traditions in a yearly thematic study. This thematic study allows pupils to draw together their learning, as well as offering planned opportunities for retrieval and recall.

As the basis of implementation, the teaching and learning approach followed in each unit incorporates three core elements:

 

Each unit is centred around a key question and core concepts, encouraging pupils to explore core texts, consider their impact and reflect on the possible implications for their own lives. These three core elements are woven together to provide breadth and balance within teaching and learning about religions and beliefs, whilst supporting our overarching aims of religious education. This structure enables our pupils to engage in open exploration of religion and belief and offer a structure through which pupils can encounter diverse religious traditions alongside non-religious world views. Additionally, they allow for questions reflecting different disciplinary approaches, from religious studies, philosophy, sociology, ethics and theology.

The knowledge and skills gained through these three elements of the teaching and learning approach build on pupils understanding of the following core concepts across religions and world views:

• Beliefs
• Diversity
• Morality
• Community and belonging
• Expression

Alongside these core concepts are concepts specific to religions studied. These concepts which are common to religious and non-religious experience and concepts specific to religious tradition help pupils to understand how beliefs and practices connect, so that pupils can build effectively on prior knowledge as they progress through school. Through the revisiting of these core concepts, pupils are supported and given opportunities to embed their prior learning whilst integrate new context into their existing schemas as the curriculum becomes increasingly more complex.

Within each unit of enquiry, our pupils are presented with a variety of learning experiences including exposure to and analysis of religious texts; opportunities to respond to art, stories and music; comparison of religions and world views through discussion; communicating and expressing their own ideas and insights through debate, art and design, drama and ICT; meeting visitors and visiting places of worship (including virtual visits).

Our school is committed to providing an inclusive education that caters for the diverse needs of all our pupils, including those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND). Our religious education curriculum has been carefully designed to meet the needs of all pupils and ensures SEND pupils receive the support and adaptive teaching. Teachers pre-teach new vocabulary and break down learning into clear success criteria. They use collaborative learning structures to promote communication and reinforce learning. Furthermore, they adapt resources to make learning more accessible, regularly check for understanding and modify tasks using a range of tools and resources to support pupil needs. By carefully adapting our religious education curriculum, we ensure that all pupils receive the support they require to succeed in this subject.

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Impact

At Stocksbridge Junior School, we endeavour to ensure that through quality-first teaching, insightful assessments and carefully designed support, the sequence of learning in religious education has a great impact on all pupils so that they are able to make progress throughout the key stage. We believe our curriculum will develop children’s critical thinking skills, increase their motivation to learn and enhance their knowledge and understanding of, and empathy with people and their beliefs, religious or otherwise.

We see our religious education curriculum impacting our pupils by developing their skills in the following ways:

• An extended knowledge and understanding of religions and world views
• Use of a developed range of subject-specific vocabulary
• Showing curiosity and asking increasingly challenging questions about religion, belief, values and human life.
• Express their own ideas in response to the material they engage with identifying relevant information, selecting examples and giving reasons to support these views and ideas.

Pupils’ achievements are assessed against end-of-phase outcomes which relate to the elements of the teaching and learning approach (making sense of beliefs; understanding the impact; make connections). Learning outcomes expressed in relation to these three elements for each key question support teachers to assess, enabling pupils to secure their understanding, knowledge and skills. Using these unit learning outcomes as stepping stones towards the end of phase outcomes allows teachers to track progress across a year group. These outcomes are then broken down further into smaller ‘I can’ statements when planning lessons and learning activities for pupils.

Our pupils’ understanding and application of the three elements and core concepts is informed by class questioning, work outcomes, discussions, quiz results, effective questioning and end of unit responses to enquiry questions. These assessment strategies are employed to support ongoing learning and adapt instruction to meet the needs of all pupils and facilitate effective learning.

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Stocksbridge Junior School Curriculum for Religious Education

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The Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education

The National Curriculum states the legal requirement that: "Every state-funded school must offer a curriculum which is balanced and broadly based, and which:

• Promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society, and
• Prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life."

And: "All state schools… must teach religious education to pupils at every key stage… All schools must publish their curriculum by subject and academic year online" (DfE National Curriculum Framework, July 2013, page 4).