Religious Education
Welcome to our Religious Education page. Here you can find lots of information about Religious Education across our school.
Intent
Religious education promotes pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. It promotes respect towards others with different beliefs and faiths and encourages pupils to develop a sense of identity and belonging. Pupils learn through an enquiry based approach where they can develop an understanding and appreciation of beliefs and cultural practices in both the local and wider community.
The key aims for religious education are to learn about religion and belief and to learn from religion and belief.
Implementation
Bowburn primary School uses and enquiry based approach to teach Religious Education, covering the Durham Agreed Syllabus. RE is taught at Bowburn alongside a variety of enrichment experiences:
- Meeting visitors from local religious communities
- Visiting religious places of worship
- Handling artefacts
- Exploring sacred texts and stories from a variety of faiths
- Whole school events (for example, assemblies and celebrations)
- Discussing and responding to images, stories, artwork
- Exploring ideas through drama, role play or imaginative play
- Comparing religions through questioning and discussion
All teaching experiences promote openness and respect for others alongside factual accuracy and critical enquiry.
Early Years Foundation Stage
Children share ideas about their own life experiences and begin to develop a respectful awareness that others may not celebrate in the same way or at the same times that they do. They learn about traditions, festivals and celebrations outside of their own experiences and explore other cultures in the wider world.
Children listen to and talk about religious stories, including Bible stories, and they learn about the story of the first Christmas and Easter.
Key Stage 1
Children learn about how belonging to a religious community is important for people and how people express their religious beliefs and ideas.
Children build on their knowledge of Christianity, exploring a variety of Bible stories and discussing what they can learn from those stories in their life today. They explore Christian churches and are able to name features that they would find in a Christian church. Children learn about Buddhism and how Buddhists show their beliefs. They listen to and explore stories from Buddhism and talk about their meaning. Children begin to explore their own questions about faiths.
Children learn about the diverse religious and non-religious landscape in the local area.
Key Stage 2
During this Key Stage, children learn about the beliefs and practices of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Judaism. Children are taught the knowledge, skills and understanding of these religions through deeper enquiry. Pupils consider the impact of beliefs and practices on the community in greater detail and respond to philosophical questions.
Children are taught about the diverse religious and non-religious landscape across the region and in a thematic study, children learn about the similarities and differences within and between religious and non-religious worldviews.
Impact
The Religious Education curriculum at Bowburn aims to ensure that pupils:
- Develop deepening knowledge and understanding about a range of religious and nonreligious worldviews so that they can:
- describe and explain beliefs and theological concepts
- describe and explain some sources of religious authority and teachings within and across religious and non-religious traditions
- describe and explain ways in which beliefs are expressed
- know and understand the significance and impact of beliefs and practices on individuals, communities and societies
- connect these together into a coherent framework of beliefs and practices
- Gain a deepening understanding of religious vocabulary
- Know and understand about religious diversity within the community and beyond, with respect
- Know and understand how religion can be defined
- Gain and deploy critical skills that enable critical thinking and enquiry
- Reflect on their own thoughts, feelings, experiences, ideas, values and beliefs with increasing discernment
Our Religious Education Lead is Mrs Lisle.
