Intent, Implementation and Impact

Vision: Ince CE Primary School is led by the light of Jesus within us all, guiding us on our individual journeys through life, so that we can grow and learn together to shine as one throughout our wider community. #Let your light shine

RE Intent

As a Church of England School, our vision and values are at the heart of everything we do and play a vital part in our pupils’ education, spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

At Ince C.E, we endeavour to ensure that Religious Education is rich, varied and inspiring, enabling children to explore big questions, reflect critically, and develop skills to analyse, interpret and apply biblical text.

We aim to provide a curriculum that promotes Christian values and is inspired by the life and example of Jesus Christ.

As a result of an excellent RE curriculum we want our children to:

• Understand Christianity as a Global living faith.
• Understand the Big Story (God’s salvation plan) and the big ideas in Christianity (the concepts).
• Become Courageous Advocates, making reasoned and well informed judgments about religious and moral issues, enabling them to problem solve ways to combat prejudice and social injustice (bringing light to the darkness).
• Positively engage with their religion and use this to make a positive impact on their friends, families and the local and wider communities.
• Have an understanding and respect for other people’s faiths and beliefs and the difference it makes to their lives, deepening their understanding of the world and their own experience within it (respect for other cultures and faiths).
• Leave school as well rounded individuals with a respect and appreciation for their own religion, beliefs, morals as well as those of others.

We want children to engage with the living faith of our school and understand how religious faith can provide a vision for both their spiritual and personal lives. Through strengthening their understanding of our Christian values (Truthfulness Thankfulness   Forgiveness   Compassion Justice Courage), we will empower children to make positive choices and develop themselves as unique, significant and precious individuals.

Implementation

The concepts of Heritage, Enlightenment and Advocacy are the foundation and structure of our curriculum implementation. The RE Whole School Overview clearly shows that within RE these concepts are embedded:

Heritage - by teaching topics which make us distinctly Christian and a Church of England School

Enlightenment - by teaching topics which focus on global Christianity and world faiths as an appreciation and comparison of the children’s own beliefs.

Advocacy - we teach what it means to be a courageous advocate and give the children the opportunity to be courageous advocates.

The implementation of our intent is carefully planned by our teachers, using the Curriculum provided by the Blackburn Diocese of Education, Questful RE and supported by the Understanding Christianity resource. The guidance given within the syllabus leads to a study of up to 80% Christianity and 20% non-Christian faiths (pupils will study aspects of the practices and beliefs of the other five major world faiths: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism.)

Questful RE is designed to take children on a journey of discovery and encourage them to be curious.

“Through an open investigative enquiry approach the pupils will be given the sense of being on a quest of discovery. A key feature of the syllabus is the large number of questions included in each unit. The purpose of these questions is to give pupils opportunity to investigate, reflect, evaluate and make meaning. In doing so they will discover more about themselves, their relationships with others, their relationship with the world around them and their relationship with God.” (Blackburn Board of Education 2017)

The children record work in both individual RE books and whole class big books. Throughout their learning the children are given opportunity to explore the ‘big ideas’ of Christianity through 8 core concepts.

These 8 core concepts make up God’s Big Story which is displayed in each class and referred to in each lesson. Pupils are regularly reminded where a particular text occurs in the Big Story in order to build up a coherent understanding of the core concepts and the relationship between them.

Each RE topic follows a 3 tier progression model of

• Explore the Text - Pupils are given opportunity to consider the content and importance of the text. Pupils will be asked questions about the content and be able to offer their ideas and opinions.
• Discover the Impact – Pupils discover the impact of the beliefs on people’s lives and in what ways that particular Christian teaching is lived out. How are the beliefs that arise from the text making a difference in people’s lives?  How are the beliefs that arise from the text making a difference in the world?
• Make the connection – Children are asked to consider how the text and its impact connect to the children’s own experiences? Pupils are given the opportunity to respond, ask questions, share ideas and see the relevance in their own lives.

Each unit sets out clearly the knowledge and skills that the children are expected to acquire as well as specific key vocabulary.

In addition to the weekly RE lesson, activities are complimented by a variety of visits to places of worship and visitors. The children are also given opportunity to explore their own spirituality through daily worship and have free access to the reflection areas in classrooms and around the school.

Impact

As a result of our RE Curriculum and the explicit teaching of Christian concepts and God’s big salvation story, the children of Ince CE Primary have a deeper understanding of Christianity.

Children are able to better understand themselves and others and to cope with the opportunities, challenges and responsibilities of living in a rapidly changing, multicultural world.

Children celebrate the diversity of the school community and promote positive images of people in the wider community, including their beliefs, traditions, culture, language and history.

Children mature spiritually, academically, emotionally and morally to enable them to become well-rounded successful citizens in future life and have a positive impact on their friends, family, local and wider community. They develop a powerful sense of advocacy and know how they can challenge injustice and improve their community and the wider world.

In addition, children:

• Are inspired by the RE Curriculum and want to learn more.
• Show progression in their skills of Making Sense of the Text, Understanding the Impact and Making Connections.
• Can discuss their learning and remember what they have learnt.
• Identify different stories from the Bible, place them on the Christianity Timeline and talk about the learning that can be taken from each story.
• Talk about the 8 concepts of the Understanding Christianity Timeline.
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. The intended impact of the RE Curriculum is that the majority of children in each year group are working at or above the expected level for their age.

We monitor the impact of our curriculum through deep dives, pupil voice exercises, work scrutiny and teaching and learning observations.

Teachers assess learning in Religious Education at the end of each unit against the Blackburn Diocese ladder of expectation.

A central tracking system is used and this data is used to make judgements on children’s progress and achievement.