Intent 

As a church school, R.E. has a unique place at the heart of our curriculum. Our twelve school values underpin each R. E. topic and are drawn from the Bible. Through R.E, we help our children to: 

• develop into respectful and compassionate people with a growing knowledge and understanding of the main religious beliefs in Great Britain. 

• appreciate the role that faith and belief might have in a person’s life. 

• find similarities and differences between their own faith and the faith of others. 

• support their spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

Implementation 

The teaching of R.E. at St John’s draws on the Birmingham and Solihull agreed syllabi, Understanding Christianity and other RE Today materials to create a bespoke curriculum tailored to meet the needs of the children at our school. We implement this curriculum through: 

• planning that progresses from EYFS through to KS2, developing skills in learning about and learning from different religions.  

• specific topics that are taught across the school and revisited each year to deepen and develop children’s experience and understanding of the 5 main religions.  

• Belonging 

• Sacred Words 

• Incarnation (Christmas) 

• Fairness and Justice 

• Holy People 

• Salvation (Easter) 

• Sacred Places 

• Creation 

• topics that are based on Christian values and that are designed to link with other curriculum areas, such as exploring belonging in the context of migration in history topics, or discussing fairness and justice alongside issues of fair trade in geography.  

• teaching that is engaging and offers the children a variety of experiences to explore their ideas and responses to religion.  

• collaborative learning that promotes community cohesion within the classroom and enables all children to participate in a supportive environment. 

• a focus on retrieval and revisiting knowledge to allow it to be embedded in the long term memory.

Impact 

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:   

• interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice) and asking key assessment questions to a range of children.  

• monitoring teacher planning.  

• celebrating images and videos of the children’s practical learning.  

• assessing the development of children’s knowledge as evidenced in R.E. books (KS2) or RE folders (EYFS, KS1). 

EYFS

Understanding the World

Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community. The frequency and range of children’s personal experiences increases their knowledge and sense of the world around them – from visiting parks, libraries and museums to meeting important members of society such as police officers, nurses and firefighters. In addition, listening to a broad selection of stories, non-fiction, rhymes and poems will foster their understanding of our culturally, socially, technologically and ecologically diverse world. As well as building important knowledge, this extends their familiarity with words that support understanding across domains. Enriching and widening children’s vocabulary will support later reading comprehension.

ELG: People, Culture and Communities

Children at the expected level of development will:

- Describe their immediate environment using knowledge from observation, discussion, stories, non-fiction texts and maps;

- Know some similarities and differences between different religious and cultural communities in this country, drawing on their experiences and what has been read in class;

- Explain some similarities and differences between life in this country and life in other countries, drawing on knowledge from stories, non-fiction texts and – when appropriate – maps.

An important part of quality RE teaching and learning is catering for all types of learners. At St John's we carefully consider the needs of all our children as individuals. Open our maps to see how teaching staff reflect on pedagogical structures and strategies to allow all children to experience an exciting and engaging curriculum!