Intent:

Our intent at St Bartholomew’s Church of England Primary School, is that our curriculum is ambitious for all pupils. We believe that the teaching of Religious Education (R.E.) is vital for the development of each child as an individual.  R.E. contributes to our children’s development; further empowering them to become inclusive, understanding citizens, who live out the British Values and who are spiritually, morally, socially and culturally literate.  We believe that our children should also be able to display religious and theologically literacy.  Our curriculum is based around the 'Understanding Christianity' programme, with collaboration and guidance from the St Alban’s Diocese. Every Class has a wide range of exciting and thought-provoking topics to cover within Christianity, as well as units of learning about other faiths. Through these areas, as well as the current issues going on in the world and our ‘Big questions’ around each topic, we encourage children to think critically, independently and in group discussions, as well as ultimately nurturing a life-long love of learning.

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Implementation:

As a school, we promote an enquiry based approach to learning. Our school follows the Hertfordshire Agreed Syllabus for R.E. supplemented with the ‘Understanding Christianity’ materials to support the teaching of Christianity.  Combined this curriculum supports children in developing their understanding of Christianity and develops their understanding of the world and their own experience within it. Our R.E. curriculum is board, balanced and inclusive, it is coherently planned and sequenced to included a balanced mixture of Christianity and world religions (Hinduism, Islam, Sikhism, Judaism and Buddhism).  The curriculum is scaffolded to support children with special educational needs.

An enquiry based approach- 

By addressing key questions, Understanding Christianity encourages pupils to explore core Bible texts, examine the impact for Christians and consider possible implications. Each unit incorporates the three elements:

• Making sense of the text – Developing skills of reading and interpretation; understanding how Christians interpret, handle and use biblical texts; making sense of the meanings of texts for Christians
• Understanding the impact – Examining ways in which Christians respond to biblical texts and teachings, and how they put their beliefs into action in diverse ways within the Christian community and in the world
• Making connections – Evaluating, reflecting on and connecting the texts and concepts studied, and discerning possible connections between these and pupils’ own lives and ways of understanding the world.

In addition to our regular visits to our local Church, collective worship is delivered by our Co-Headteachers, Vicars Miranda, Michael and Reverend Cannon Jonathan. Each year group either visits a place of worship of a faith other than Christianity or is visited by a faith representative.