Religious Education

At Cronton CE Primary School our KEYS Curriculum is built around the National Curriculum, enriched to reflect the children and community we teach in. As a church school our Christian ethos and school values are the heart of everything we do.

We believe every child can be their BEST with our Vision statement reflecting this.

“I can do everything through God who gives me strength” Philippians 4:13

Intent

As a Church of England school, the foundation of our approach is the Christian faith. The school enjoys strong links with the church, and this allows everyone to learn about and practice Christian beliefs, and all are invited to take part in its community life. The school is committed to respecting the personal values and beliefs (religious or otherwise) of parents and children.

We believe that R.E. in general and Christian teaching in particular play an important part in our teaching explicitly through weekly R.E lessons and  implicitly through our teaching of the Christian values in daily collective worship and in everyday school life. These lessons are linked also to the statements on collective worship and the social, cultural and moral development.

Based on the Christian faith, we aim to teach the children to be considerate and respectful of themselves, others and the environment with everyone leading by example and demonstrating our belief in the gospel values.

We aim to develop the children in our care by giving them wide ranging experiences so that they gain knowledge and understanding of the world about them and value the opportunities that they have.

We aim to give them a firm grounding in the skills needed to succeed by being literate, numerate, creative and to possess technology skills to discover information for themselves within a safe, purposeful and open learning environment.

We aim to develop the whole child so that they are confident and motivated to learn and develop their own individual abilities and talents in order to achieve success that is recognised and celebrated.

We aim to make school a place of happy memories and enjoyable learning, where all children are given a chance to shine and to leave the school as well-rounded individuals.

We aim to involve the parents in the partnership of their child’s education at our school and foster relationships that will support the development of their child.

We aim to develop our own skills and knowledge as we recognise that learning is a lifelong journey and all staff are committed to their own development to benefit ourselves and the children we teach.

Implementation 

It has been agreed that:

• The R.E. Syllabus for Primary School published by the Blackburn Diocesan Board be the main source for the planning and teaching of R.E. in Cronton C.E. School.
• Christian and non- Christian faiths – Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism and Sikhism will be taught throughout Key Stage 1 and 2.
• Children are also given the opportunity to celebrate other religious festivals through cross curricular and multicultural links.

Lesson Structure

This lesson structure has been designed to ensure the children learn more and remember more, combining recapping with learning new knowledge and allowing children to make links. They will develop an understanding of vocabulary and knowledge.  

RE Long Term Plan

We use the Understanding Christianity Big Frieze to support our teaching. 

We have displays in the main hall that show each part of the Big Frieze. As a school, each class also recreated a section of the frieze during out Art Week.  

In Nursey, we read Jonah and the Whale and talked about a time when we had to say sorry. We then drew pictures of Jonah and the Whale.  

In Year 1, to start our topic off we went to see if the seeds we planted when we were in Reception had grown. We found that most had and we excited to find them. However we realised that none of our beetroot seeds had grown, which led us on to discuss what happens when crops fail. 

Year 2 have been learning all about the Bible and why it is a special book for Christians.  We have read a selection of Bible stories and discussed which are our favourites and why.

Year 5 have enjoyed learning all about the importance of the Bible and how Christians use the Bible in their everyday lives. We applied all the learning about values and attitudes to modern day issues such as climate change and thought about how the Bible could guide us. The highlight of the topic was a visit by Mrs Whitehouse who spoke passionately about how the Bible guides her. 

Year 6 have been learning about Journey's and Pilgrimages. We were lucky to have a visit from Mrs Whitehouse, who talked about her journey as a Christian. The children had developed questions and listened carefully to Mrs Whitehouse as she talked about her travels and all the fantastic charities she has worked for . It was inspirational and our children took on board the message of hope and trust that we each have a different journey that is help by our faith. 

Ethos Group

Each year we recruit a group of Key Stage 2 children to become our Ethos Group. The children fill out application forms for the role, explaining why they would like to join and outlining the qualities they have to make them excellent Ethos Group members. 

Ethos Group attend weekly meetings with members of school staff and clergy and are responsible for leading Collective Worship, leading prayer activities and helping with fund-raising and Courageous Advocacy projects. 

We have now welcomed our new Ethos Group for 2021. Children from each KS2 class have asked to take part. Ethos group are now meeting every Wednesday and have started a new display for our school entrance. They each received a wooden hand cross from school.

In Ethos Group, we looked at and discussed how to improve our prayer area. As it is mental awareness week we also talked about new life while we were reconnecting with nature, planting seeds which will later go into our prayer area.