Religious Education
Intent
Religious Education at Meadowhead Infant School and Nursery supports children in affirming and developing their own beliefs, values and attitudes through a variety of first hand experiences and activities. Rather than simply acquiring factual information, RE leads to wisdom, knowledge and understanding. By embracing the explicit teaching of Christian concepts and God’s big salvation story, it is hoped that the content of the syllabus will give children a deeper understanding of Christianity. In addition, through the exploration of all major World Faiths and discussion of non-religious worldviews, pupils will gain knowledge and understanding that will equip them to encounter life’s experiences in our world today and in the future.
Whoever we are, wherever we live, whether we are a person of faith or not, we all have a view on the world. Nobody stands nowhere.
Implementation
At Meadowhead Infant School, we follow the revised RE syllabus ‘Questful RE’ from the Blackburn Diocesan Board of Education. In RE lessons, children will experience, explore and encounter a wide range of creative and challenging multi-sensory activities that will help them to discover the answers to fundamental questions such as:
- Who am I and what does it mean to be me?
- In what ways do/can I relate to others?
- How/where can I encounter God?
- How can I make a positive contribution to the world in which I live?
- What values, attitudes, beliefs and behaviour are important to me?
- What does it mean to have faith?
- Who/what influences and inspires me?
Through an open investigative enquiry approach children will be given the sense of being on a quest of discovery. A key feature of the syllabus is the large number of questions included in each unit. The purpose of these questions is to give children an opportunity to investigate, reflect, evaluate and make meaning. In doing so they will discover more about themselves, their relationships with others and their relationship with the world around them. The questions set the route through the curriculum content.
The RE curriculum is taught for 5% of the timetable allocation and it is noted that parents have the right to withdraw their child from Religious Education due to their own personal beliefs.
Impact
Teachers assess the knowledge and skills the children have acquired at the end of each unit by using a series of ‘emerging,’ ‘expected’ and ‘exceeding’ learning outcomes for each key question. Through studying RE at Meadowhead Infant school and Nursery, we hope children will develop a positive sense of themselves, and others, and to learn how to form positive and respectful relationships which contributes to children’s overall spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.