RE - Mount Pleasant Junior School

RE

RE Curriculum

At Mount Pleasant Junior School, Religious Education is taught in accordance with the legal requirements of Living Difference III – the Agreed syllabus for schools in Hampshire, Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle of Wight. This Document is the statutory framework, which defines the matters, skills and processes that need to be taught. We follow a common enquiry cycle, enabling pupils to become familiar with asking and answering questions, always beginning with their own experiences of a concept before contextualizing it into another world religion.

The curriculum is delivered through Learning Questions; these are concept-led and contextualised through specific religions. As per the syllabus of Living Difference III, pupils learn about Christianity and two world religions across Key stage 2 (lower key stage 2, Christianity and Hinduism and Upper stage 2, Christianity and Judaism). We draw upon our diverse school community to build knowledge of a range of religions and give pupils the opportunity to make sense of the world they live in.

Rationale

Religious education can provide a rich and wide range of experiences inside and outside the classroom, which give children opportunities to develop concepts and skills that will help them to make sense of their own experiences and beliefs, and to understand the beliefs and practices of members of faith communities through open, fair-minded enquiry. This entails enabling children to interpret and respond to a variety of concepts, beliefs and practices within religions and to their own and others’ cultural and life experiences. This takes the form of encountering religious stories, festivals, artefacts, places of worships and beliefs. Indoctrination and conversion are not part of the educational process and therefore have no place in religious education. Religious education is an educational subject in its own right, taught within an educational framework.

End of Year 4
Commuicate	Children can describe their own responses to the human experience of the concepts studied.
Apply	They can describe examples of how their responses are, or can be, applied in their own lives and the lives of others.
Enquire	They can describe key concepts that are common to all people as well as those that are common to the lives of many living a religiuos life (A and B concepts)
Contextualise	They can describe how these concepts are contextualised within some of the beliefs and/or practices and/or ways of life people living in a religious life in the religion studied.
Evaluate	They can evaluate human experience of the concepts by describing their value to people and through dialoguing with others can recognise, identify and describe some issues raised.

End of Year 6
Communicate	Children and young people can explain their own response to the human experience of the concepts explored.
Apply	They can explain examples of how their responses to the concepts can be applied in their own lives and the lives of others.
Enquire	Children and young people can explain key concepts that are common to all people (A concepts) asa well as those that are common to many religions (B concepts) and they can describe some key concepts that are particular to the specific religions studied (C concepts)
Contextualise	They can explain how these concepts are contextualised within the beliefs and/or practices and/or the ways of life people living in a religious life in the religions studied.
Evaluate	They can evaluate the concepts by explaining their value to people living a religious life by drawing on examples. Dialoguing with other children will enable them to discern for themselves and so identify and describe in increasingly complex ways some of the issues they raise.