RE
Religious Education permeates the whole curriculum and is not a subject studied in isolation. Every aspect of the child’s experience in school should be consistent with the aims of a Catholic education.
The content of our RE curriculum follows the Religious Education Curriculum Directory (RECD).
Aims
Our aim at St Cuthbert Mayne School is to:
- enthuse children with the teachings of the Church, the lives of saints and the relationship between faith and life
- help children to begin to look at and focus on the relevant experiences within their own lives
- lead children to a deeper understanding and clearer vision of their faith
- engage children with the deepest questions of life and look for reasons for hope within them
- educate children on the mystery of God, as discovered through the Bible and particularly through the life and teachings of Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit.
Curriculum organisation
- We teach the RE Curriculum Directory and use the Catholic Primary Religious Education Programme: Come and See to deliver this.
- The programme is divided into three different topics each term.
- Each year group will be studying a different topic, although along a similar theme.
- Children will also study two other faiths during the year.
Teaching
- As well as permeating through the life of the school, Religious Education will be taught discretely and developmentally. It will include the deepening of knowledge, and understanding of key theological ideas and their application to life.
- Ample opportunities will be offered for children to apply and use their knowledge and skills in cross-curricular studies to deepen their understanding of religious truths and think creatively.
- Engagement with their own and others’ beliefs and values will help to develop good attitudes so that children are instilled with a love of learning and a desire to go on learning.
- Engagement with difficult questions of meaning and purpose, which everyone has to face, will enable them to think critically about their own questions.
- Offer the children a sense of self-worth through their experience of belonging to a caring community and an awareness of the demands of religious commitment in everyday life.
Key skills
Throughout Key Stage 2, children develop the following skills:
- Exploring experience through story, music, drama, dance and art
- Investigation
- Story telling
- Awareness and consideration of the deeper questions
- Discussion
- Reflection
- Use religious vocabulary
- Use sources
- Construct arguments
- Make judgements.
In addition, children in Years 3 and 4 are given opportunities to:
- Express
- Ask and respond
- Make links
- Describe
- Retell
In addition, children in Years 5 and 6 are given opportunities to:
- Recognise diversity
- Make links/connections
Provision for More and Most Able Children
We plan a variety of opportunities to extend, enrich and enhance the learning of our more and most able children, so that they achieve to the best of their ability and make the best possible progress. Our approach to marking children’s work provides a further dimension of challenge.
Expectations
By the end of Key Stage 2, pupils are:
- expected to know, apply and understand the themes and skills studied
- religiously literate and engaged with their faith.