Lime Walk Primary School

At Lime Walk Primary School Religious Education is considered a vital part of the broad and balanced curriculum pupils are entitled to. R.E. aids spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, children’s personal development and well-being and encourages community cohesion. At Lime Walk Primary School we believe that R.E. does not seek to enforce religious beliefs on children or to compromise the integrity of their own beliefs by promoting one religion over another. We allow children to discover and gain an insight into the world’s 6 main religions through questioning and exploration.

Our role as a school is to ensure pupils are exposed to high quality teaching and experiences. We strive for diversity to not just be celebrated through day to day teaching, but also within the recognition of festivals across all main religions.

Our curriculum aims to ready children with the skills, knowledge and understanding needed when exploring different religious beliefs, while also equipping them to both express and challenge opinions shared in these conversations. We wish to develop the understanding our pupils have of the different beliefs and embrace difference, appreciating how our world is a diverse and interesting place to live in. We believe in doing so, our children will be supported in their journey into further education and towards adulthood while being able to show the kindness and understanding towards others that will make them an asset within our modern society.

At Lime Walk Primary School we follow the Discovery RE Syllabus of Religious Education.

Lessons follow a clear, consistent sequence that is taught weekly. Topics are mapped out to ensure that by the time our pupils reach year 6, they have been provided with opportunities to learn about each of the 6 main religions; Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism and Buddhism.

RE at Lime Walk inspires questions that challenge our pupils, encourages them to explore their own beliefs, enables children to build their sense of belonging and identity and teaches pupils to develop respect for others.

In the Early Years, RE is taught through themes such as special people, places and stories. Alongside this, some of our RE content in EYFS is taught more discretely through other subjects, such as PSHE and our Jigsaw scheme of learning, when exploring ‘Being me in my world' and 'celebrating differences'.

From here the children in KS1 and KS2 move into more explicit weekly teaching within the Discovery R.E. scheme. Each topic has a key question that the children begin with and refer to throughout their learning, encouraging them to think openly and deeply about their knowledge and opinions as they develop both through units and year groups. Pupils are given opportunities to research using a variety of mediums in order to both promote curiosity and develop independent thinking. This in turn allows our pupils to take more control over their learning, increasing their engagement and desire for knowledge.

Our teachers also understand the importance of teaching and using the correct technical vocabulary. This is implemented through modelling, the use of discussions and aiding pupils to apply these within their work. By doing this, we believe we are giving the children the best possible chance to understand and embed this subject specific vocabulary into their long term memory.

Where possible, we do our best to make Religious Education as meaningful and exciting as possible. Year groups often achieve this in a cross curricular manner, including arts, visiting places of worship, assemblies, having visitors within school and making trips into the local community. We believe that first-hand learning experiences are the key to developing and supporting life-skills. With this in mind, we aim to link events into current learning in order to best apply what the children already know and are being immersed in at the time.

Further details of our curriculum and the units covered can be found in the document below.

At Lime Walk primary school we believe we can measure our success in everyday school life in a number of ways. These include:

• Children showing empathy towards their peers and other members of the school.
• Children feeling as though they are valued and heard with their beliefs being learnt about, discussed and celebrated.
• Children demonstrating that they are positive members of our community within school.
• Children demonstrating a deeper understanding of different cultures through their relationships with others and the discussions/opinions they share.
• Children feeling safe to share their beliefs in an environment that is accepting, as well as being willing to learn new ideologies.
• Children leaving Lime Walk primary school with a sense of belonging within a community; having the skills and confidence to make connections and decisions, share opinions in a thoughtful manner, self-evaluate and become lifelong learners.