RE

Our WONDER Religious Education is taught taking inspiration from the “Derby Agreed Syllabus”. We pride ourselves in contributing to our children’s ability to learn not only about religions and worldviews, but also from them. Although our main emphasis is around Christian values, which is thread throughout our school values, we regularly share festivals, celebrations and stories from other cultures throughout our collective worship sessions in order to develop our children’s understanding of the diversity of today’s world. Through carefully planned learning episodes, we strive to provide children with thought-provoking and challenging questions, share with them a range of beliefs about God and issues of right and wrong which enables them to generate their own ideas of what it means to be human. We aim to equip our pupils with a broad and deep understanding of the local, national and global landscape of religion, cultures and belief diversity whilst also making connections between their own values and beliefs in order for them to participate positively in society and hold balanced and well-informed conversations about religion and beliefs.

In order to provide children with a broad coverage of religions, children will explore, in depth, one of the 5 world faiths each year with an opportunity in Year 4 to revisit and deepen their understanding of Christianity. Our aim, throughout all of our learning episodes, is to understand how different faiths express their beliefs, engage in enquiry to derive their own understanding and begin to build an understanding of what it is to be a person of that religion. Allowing children a full year to explore and learn about a religion enables them to create a deep-rooted understanding of the religion and its core principles. Simultaneously, our creative and collaborative approach to teaching and learning allows children to become curious about the religion and begin to make connections between the religion and their own lives as well as connections to their prior learning of our carefully planned curriculum. 

Children will also develop a range of transferable skills, such as inference, comparing and questioning to ensure they are able to appreciate and appraise varied views in order to develop and explain their own responses. 

Mutual respect and tolerance are values which are vital within our diverse community. Therefore, the emphasis of these skills is at the heart of our curriculum which allows children to appreciate, accept and evaluate a variety of views and practices in a respectful manner. Children will gain important higher order thinking skills of interpretation and evaluation throughout learning episodes allowing them to articulate clearly and coherently their personal beliefs, ideas, values and experiences whilst respecting the rights of others to differ. 

Alongside this, our yearly ‘Big Questions’ allow children to find out and broaden their knowledge of a specific topic across the main religions. This requires children to revisit prior learning whilst also giving children an opportunity to ‘fast forward’ and explore some of the concepts covered in future year groups. Through this, children are able to build a deeper understanding between religions, highlighting some comparisons of which they may not have been aware. Our ultimate aim is to build a culture of mutual respect and tolerance borne from understanding.

As part of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 (section 71), parents/ guardians have the right to withdraw their child from RE or from collective worship. Should they wish to do so, they must contact the Principal directly to discuss their options.