Our Curriculum
RE
RE Statement of Intent
At Cottingley Primary Academy we want each and every child inspired to choose a Remarkable Life and so we have designed our Religious Education curriculum to reflect this. We want our RE curriculum to provide the children with as many opportunities as possible to enable them to truly find their remarkable. Our school is about creating exciting and engaging learning opportunities for all children, so that they learn to love learning and create really special memories of their time in school.
Through RE we want to inspire curiosity amongst our children, developing children’s knowledge and understanding of religion, religious beliefs, practices and traditions and their influence on individuals, communities and cultures. Our curriculum aims to help children to understand that others may believe differently to them and gives individuals the opportunity to state and explore their own beliefs. Alongside the Discovery RE we also utilise the Leeds locally agreed ‘Believing and Belonging West Yorkshire syllabus’ which is adapted to suit the local area context. In addition to this we also explore the different religions of the children in our school at the relevant times of the year through assemblies, visitors in and out of school etc. We develop our key drivers amongst children with a strong focus on independence, confidence and communication in RE lessons to better ready them for their futures.
RE Sequence of Learning
Curriculum Map
Progression Map
Knowledge and Vocabulary
Our RE Curriculum
At the start of each year, or before going back to a previous religion they have learned about, the children take part in a revisiting RE day. Children revisit the previous big enquiry questions before moving on. At the end of the half term the children are involved in ‘ Retention Rivals’ which gives them an opportunity to recap learning and show what they know from the previous units. Visits in and out of school are planned for these days along with virtual and creative experiences.
Each enquiry follows four steps
Step 1: Engagement: the children’s own human experience is explored to act as a bridge from their world (which may or may not include religion) into the world of the religion being studied.
Step 2: Investigation: over approximately 3 lessons the teacher will guide the children to explore and investigate appropriate subject knowledge relevant to that question of enquiry.
Step 3: Evaluation: An assessment activity enables each child to show their thinking and the depth of critical evaluation.
Step 4: Expression: This refers the children back to the starting point of their own experience and allows them to reflect on whether their findings have influenced their own thinking.
For each enquiry there are also five key pieces of knowledge that we want children to be able to learn and remember securely. This ensures that as children progress through the curriculum, their bank of knowledge about each key religion builds over time.
We explicitly teach key vocabulary from the discovery RE knowledge organisers.
Throughout topics we plan specific opportunities for Cottingley’s Curriculum key driver development - in particular RE links best with communication.
We enhance and enrich each topic for our children to make them exciting and memorable - these opportunities include visitors in, visits out to places of worship, parent workshops, assemblies etc
Throughout our teaching we use a range of low stakes retrieval quizzes / memory activities to support children to retain their learning alongside the end of half term ‘ Retention Rivals’ .
National Curriculum
Subject Rationale