RE

Intent

• To deliver the Jigsaw RE scheme of work, which aids children’s personal, social and spiritual development
• To explore what people believe and what difference this makes to how they live, so that pupils can gain the knowledge, understanding and skills needed to handle questions raised by religion and belief, reflecting on their own ideas and ways of living. 
• To enable children to become independent and responsible members of a society who understand and explore big questions about life, to find out what people believe and what difference this makes to how they live, so that they can make sense of religion, reflecting on their own ideas and ways of living.
• To provide children with opportunities for them to learn about and from religions and worldviews in local, national and global contexts, to discover, explore and consider different answers to these questions.
• To equip children with systematic knowledge and understanding of a range of religions and worldviews, enabling them to develop their ideas, values and identities.
• To develop an ability to debate and discuss important issues so that they can participate positively in our society, with its diverse religions and worldviews.
• To provide children with opportunities to make sense of a range of religious and non-religious beliefs, understand the impact of and significance of religious and non-religious beliefs and make connections between religious and non-religious beliefs, concepts, practices and ideas studied.

 Implementation

At Tregony School we implement our RE teaching and learning through the Jigsaw RE scheme of work, which has been fully mapped to the Cornwall Agreed Syllabus 2020-2025.  The teaching and learning approach of Jigsaw RE (5-11) is a ‘four step enquiry method’.  Each enquiry has a key question which is such that it demands an answer that weighs up ‘evidence’ and reaches a conclusion based on this. This necessitates children using their subject knowledge and applying it to the enquiry question, rather than this knowledge being an end in itself.

For the 5-11 age ranges, there are a minimum of 3 planned enquiries for Christianity teaching in every year group/class. We have then chosen from a selection of other world religions to teach alongside this in the remaining 3 half-termly teaching blocks for that year.  Each enquiry has 6 lesson plans, but teaching time can be blocked into days or half days as required by the individual class teacher.

 Jigsaw RE focuses on critical thinking skills, on personal reflection into the child’s own thoughts and feelings, on growing subject knowledge and nurturing spiritual development and uses the 4-step model (engagement, investigation, evaluation and expression).

 Using the Pause Points and the Help Me Reflect sections of each Jigsaw Piece, helps the children relax and calm their minds, and allows them to bring their awareness/attention to the present moment. 

Children need to develop the ability to be aware of their own thoughts and feelings. Not only does this help them develop their own personal spirituality, it also allows them the time to further embed their learning, and consider key teaching points. It can additionally lead to a greater empathy with, and understanding of, believers or followers of that worldview.

The layout of session plans for Early Years (3-5) is more simplified to the rest of the age 5+ planning.  In each of these age-groups are six Enquiries, one for each half-term throughout the school year. These follow similar themes for F1 and F2 but are either differentiated or contain different subject knowledge material for the age/stage of the children.

The Early Years enquiries gives our youngest learners a taste of different experiences, based on their own understanding of the world.

 Impact

We want the R.E. curriculum to impact on the children in the following ways:

• To deepen their reflection on questions of meaning, offering their own thoughtful and informed insights into religious and non-religious views of life’s meaning and purpose.
• To help them explore fundamental questions of beliefs and values in relation to a range of contemporary issues.
• To consider their own beliefs, values and attitudes and become more tolerant of the beliefs, values and attitudes of others.
• To consider religious perspectives on contemporary social and moral issues.
• To equip our pupils with strong skills to consider issues of community cohesion, diversity and religious understanding. 
• To contribute significantly to pupils’ academic progress and their personal development.  

We measure the impact of our curriculum in the following ways:

• Children demonstrate a positive attitude towards people of any religion and show an understanding of cultural beliefs different to their own.
• They demonstrate respectful behaviour to all and this is transferable outside of school in the wider community and beyond.
• Assessing children’s understanding of each unit before and after the unit is taught.
• Images and videos of the children’s learning.
• Interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Pupil’s books are scrutinised and there is the opportunity for a dialogue between teachers to understand their class’s work.