Religious Education
What is the intent of our religious education curriculum at John Keble?
John Keble is a Church of England Primary School where we aim is to develop confident, religiously literate children. Our religious education offers a balance of teaching key content and concepts as well as giving the opportunity for children to reflect and develop their personal views on what they have learnt from religion and how that may impact their actions as well as to appreciate and appraise different perspectives.
We follow the London Diocesan Board for Schools (LDBS) scheme of work which has as its stated aims:
- To know about and understand Christianity as a diverse global living faith through the exploration of core beliefs using an approach that critically engages with biblical text.
- To gain knowledge and understanding of a range of religious and world views appreciating diversity, continuity and change within the religions and world views studied.
- To engage with challenging questions of meaning and purpose raised by human existence and experience.
- To explore their own religious, spiritual and philosophical ways of living, believing and thinking.
- To enable all children to become religiously literate.
It intends
- To ensure religious education enables all children to live life in all its fullness.
- To offer a systematic enquiry-based approach to the teaching of religious education so that the following skills in children can be developed:
- Ability to be critical thinkers
- Ability to engage critically with texts
- Ability to ask deep and meaningful questions
- Ability to make connections within and across religions and world views
- Ability to reflect, respond and express their own religious, spiritual and/or philosophical convictions
- Ability to make their own choices and decisions concerning religion and belief based on a deep knowledge and understanding of religions and world views, belief systems, values and practices.
How do we implement the religious education curriculum at John Keble school?
We follow the London Diocesan Board for Schools (LDBS) scheme of work exploring each unit through 'big questions'. Two-thirds of the RE curriculum is focused on Christianity and one third on other religions including Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism and Islam.
It offers units that:
- Are rooted in theological concepts, strong subject knowledge and content.
- Offer a balanced curriculum which enquires into religions and worldviews through theology, philosophy and the human and social sciences.
- Offer sequential learning both in terms of knowledge and skills across the primary age range.
- Offer motivating, engaging and creative lessons for all children.
- Provide opportunities for children to develop empathy towards people of similar or differing religious or world views to their own.
Click on the link to download a copy of the Religious Education curriculum at John Keble school.
What is the impact of our relgious education curriculum at John Keble school?
Nursery
Nursery class have been making a banner for the Refugee Support Network to welcome Afghani refugees. We read the story of the Good Samaritan from the Bible and talked about being kind to strangers. We thought about Jesus’s message to ‘love your neighbours’.
Reception Box
We have been learning about who made the wonderful world. We learnt about the Christian creation story and acted the story out, making up actions for each day of the story. The children then discussed their favourite thing about God’s creation, and we went on a nature walk in the playground, looking at aspects of the natural world. We then linked this to the different days of the creation story.
1 Oak
Here are pictures from Class Worship in 1 Oak where we looked at Christian Values. We thought about them and their meaning and made an action to remember them.
Pre-secondary - 6 Willow
The children in Pre-Secondary have been exploring the journey of life and death -learning about religious rites of passage and sacraments as well as reflecting on their own journey as well as other perspectives of human and social sciences.
Pre-secondary - 6 Birch The children asked Mr Martin and Mrs Goddard questions about their weddings to help them compare Christian and secular weddings.
Examples of more creative learning in RE so far this academic year
Nursery have made 'search for Jesus' bottles to make the story of Jesus getting lost in the temple memorable.
Reception are already starting to think critically discussing how might Mary and Joseph have felt about having a baby who is the Son of God?
Year 1 in autumn drew pictures of the story of creation and crafted some people and animals who were present at Jesus’ birth. This term for the lesson, ‘‘What was the angels good news?’ they created angel puppets to role-play the angels telling Mary the good news with teachers recording what individual children said.
Year 2 in an autumn lesson on temptation blended psychology and R.E to create a memorable lesson where children were tempted by a variety of treats to raise questions about temptation and self-control. They earned about the Bible story in which Jesus was tempted by the devil while fasting for 40 days. They have also turned detective and been on a hunt around the school to find clues to help them learn who John Keble was and why our school was named after him.
Year 3 have written letters as St Paul to people who do not know who Jesus is.
Year 4 reimagined the Beatitudes as 'Be attitudes' to help them relate to them as ways of being. They were given a story about a child in a 'dilemma', and use their new learning to think about how they could solve the child's problem.
Year 5 analysed a variety of traditional and contemporary art and music linked to the incarnation and created their own artistic or musical expression of Christmas.
Year 6 in autumn had a question time with Mr Martin and Mrs Goddard to help them compare their Christian and secular weddings. This half-term, they have been creating their own Christmas adverts focusing on a combination of aspects they consider most important to the festival of Christmas.
'I enjoy teaching RE because it gives opportunities to focus on moral messages which influence the way we all behave at school. Our values, whatever our religious background, help inform our choices and bring us together,'
Mrs Paillard, 3 Lime Class Teacher