Author: Teachers Talk

What have Universities ever done for us?

What have Universities ever done for us? Why RE teachers might want to explore the support their local HE institution can offer

With news that the future of Theology and Religious Studies has yet again come under threat at an esteemed University [link], it has been so heartening to see the flood of support come in from schools and colleges across the country for the subject, department and staff. It is a reminder of the continuing strength and encouragement of the RE community, but also of the value teachers place on our subject in Higher Education. Well, I would like to tell you the feeling is mutual. Colleagues working in the University sector recognise the invaluable role teachers play in preparing students to study at this level, and often the passion they have instilled in students for religious education. I have lost count of the times students have attributed their love for the subject to their RE teacher at school (and they often say they want to be a teacher just like you!). So the links between schools and Universities are well established in the RE world, but I would like to encourage or remind you why you might want to engage further with your local HE institution. These are examples of what we at the University of Worcester can offer:

  • We have experts in RE across all phrases of education, from EYFS upwards. Teacher Training in Primary, Secondary and Further Education is our raison d’être so we are in a good place to provide support on matters of learning and teaching.
  • University staff are conducting the most up to date research and as research-driven pedagogies drive our teaching we are in a good place to see what new thinking, ideas and strategies are coming through literature – we are also not afraid to question these!
  • We have strong links with NATRE, local schools, places of worship and interfaith forums in the aim of strengthening the work of RE departments in our local schools. We run a NATRE/UW RE Hub which meets termly to discuss relevant topics (e.g. most recently faith and sexuality) and provide CPD (e.g. the launch of the Locally Agreed Syllabus). These are very well attended, and the generosity, kindness and collaboration of attendees is inspiring.

You will likely find a more than willing Religious Studies/Theology department at your local University, but you are also welcome to contact me, Rebecca Davidge at r.davidge@worc.ac.uk

 

10 suggestions to help you plan RE for home learning.

  1. Find out the main religious festivals happening this Spring term and plan learning around these. The focus for many festivals is welcoming spring and new life. Learning about these will help children and young people look to the future and anticipate the return of Spring which is a much-needed emphasis in the grey days of January. RE Online has a fantastic overview of the key religious festivals, provided by the Shap Working Party. It is available here: https://www.reonline.org.uk/festival-calendar/

  2. Plan learning about religious and non-religious responses to the pandemic and celebrate what diverse communities have done to help their community in this time. Suggestions include the work of Khalsa aid https://www.khalsaaid.org/about-us; Islamic relief https://www.islamic-relief.org.uk/news/page/3/; the Salvation army https://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/about-us; the Trussell Trust https://www.trusselltrust.org/.

  3. Keep your focus simple and have one clear aim for the learning so that is straightforward for parents to pick up and understand. Keep the topic simple too so that parents and children can investigate it together.

  4. Provide the websites that children and young people can use to find out about RE and don’t suggest an open research project which will allow them to search the internet at home without restriction. Reliable websites include BBC bitesize, BBC my life, My religion, CBeebies, RE Quest for Christianity, RE Online teaching Resources, Humanists UK and NATRE.

  5. Ensure that the work set uses the language of all, many, most, some, a few and avoids the language of all unless it is for something that you know all would accept in a community. Using this in the work that you set is important to show that while communities may have many things in common, they will not always believe and practice their beliefs in the same way.

  6. Look for opportunities for children and young people to use their walks or gardens for thinking about their RE – for example, going on a spring walk to look at nature and consider different responses to the concept of creation and the environment, looking for signs of new life in nature to begin learning about how many Christians use this symbol at Easter time and planting/painting young plants when learning about some of the spring festivals.

  7. Use painting or drawing opportunities in RE where possible so that children and young people can consolidate their learning. For example, drawing/painting a Shabbat meal, a scene from the story of the Passover, a scene from the Easter story, considering art from around the world and in history and using watercolours to paint about Holi.

  8. Use your RE focus to provide cross-curricular writing opportunities. For example, asking children to write a diary entry from a disciple’s point of view when studying Easter, writing the story of the Passover highlighting the role of Moses and his importance to his people and explaining how the Khalsa was formed when learning about the festival of Vaisakhi.

  9. Use the benefit of children and young people being at home to make and eat some of the foods traditionally eaten at this time of year – such as hot cross buns and Simnel cake at Easter and sweets for Chinese New Year.

  10. Encourage children and young people to take part in a competition, such as the one for writing advertised on RE Online here which has a deadline of 31 March: https://www.reonline.org.uk/news/pupil-blog-competition/ 

Justine Ball – Primary RE Inspector and Advisor and the South East Regional Ambassador. @justineballRE

Learning to glean

Are you feeling inundated by advice and ‘helpful’ anecdotes for your teaching? Fed up with the animosity on social media RE pages and wondering how the most tolerant subject can produce teachers and leaders who can be so judgemental and condescending?

In a subject which is meant to be a pioneer for community cohesion, how have we missed the bar so much in how we speak to other RE teachers and colleagues?

(I should just say that it is in the teaching standards to further our own CPD and I do understand that there are some teachers who refuse to learn, research or change their ways. I know how frustrating it is for some to keep answering the same kinds of questions when teachers should be trying to better themselves. This blog isn’t about those teachers who don’t want to change- let’s face it, they won’t be reading this anyway! Although it is time to show more compassion and kindness to our colleagues and dig deep into the values of our wonderful subject perpetuates.)

The Biblical story of Ruth celebrates the power to start again, to gather what was previously scattered, and to glean all that we need. In teaching, gleaning what is relevant has become more important as the information, guidance and advice can come in torrents.

In Religious Education, there is certainly a push to use research and this is largely positive. I attended a fantastic conference, REXchange, held by Culham St Gabriels in October. It birthed some new ideas for me and got me thinking about my own professional development. I’m grateful to the presenters for sharing their ideas.

Research can be about RE- most of the research projects that we often hear about are founded in the RE world, often with a focus on pedagogy and teaching methods. I spent a glorious half term benefitting from the wonderful Farmington Fellowship opportunity (now Farmington Scholarships) and learning from experienced mentors and other colleagues. It shaped my career and deepened my passion for RE as I looked into motivating disaffected RE teachers.

Yet there is also research for RE which is more about research beyond the RE world, yet has something to say for RE, for example on assessment, knowledge retention or using technology.

With all the research out there, how can we glean what is good for teaching RE without being overwhelmed by the sheer amounts of research and information, but not missing out on innovative or interdisciplinary work that could benefit an individual or school?

It is worth noting that we should make sure there is evidence in everyday practice and not just on paper. I have read so many books, but it isn’t until I’ve actually tried something in a lesson or topic that I know if it will benefit. It will involve being brave, taking a risk and ‘having a go’.

Don’t be scared off by the idea of taking part in research- it is very much like what we do in professional practice anyway where we test and see what works. Just with research, it is more systematic and rigorous and used for the wider profession.

What research actually means in practice isn’t always clear- it’s very easy to look like someone is really engaged with research, but they may just be repeating stock phrases from a paper or project or spouting the need to ‘embed research in the profession’. The language can be condescending for some to hear and they may feel inadequate to take part.

Good engagement with research will involve partnership with the researcher and the teacher. The importance of networking shouldn’t be underestimated here. There are certainly going to be opportunities for linking with research and trying new ideas over the coming months. I am looking forward to meeting like-minded RE ‘geeks’ who want to deepen subject knowledge or embed practice in our local NATRE groups.

But please don’t think I am suggesting you take part in or create educational research! Time and dedication will be required and we don’t have a lot of that at the moment! Yet dipping in and trying something can reinvigorate your lessons or even your curriculum. I loved trialling Sue Phillips’ Theatre of Learning in my early career and it changed the way I taught!

You are permitted to say ‘no’. It’s okay for you to miss an #REchatUK on Twitter. It’s definitely okay to not join every RE argument you are invited to on social media or in the staffroom! Instead, enjoy gleaning- look for the little things that will help your teaching. Improving your subject knowledge is a great thing, but attending every zoom conference and reading every blog in place of leisure activities may affect your mental health and wellbeing. If you want to get fully involved in rewriting a curriculum or leading research, that is amazing. It is also fine for you to develop your teaching in your own way and you shouldn’t feel judged by RE colleagues for this decision. Be kind to yourself- your dedication can never be underestimated, but you are not replaceable to your family and friends. Learn, like Ruth, to glean from what has been scattered and find new life in these tricky times.

Sarah Payne subject leader for RE and PSHCE at Woodland Middle School and the South Central Regional Ambassador. @SPayneRE

Closing the Reading Gap in Religious Education

 Why should we promote reading?

  • Reading is an essential element in all stages of education
  • Reading should be prioritised to allow access to the full curriculum offer
  • 90% of vocabulary is encountered in reading, not day-to-day speech
  • Fiction does not give access to more academic vocabulary used for GCSE and beyond
  • Primary students learn to read, secondary students read to learn
  • Secondary children need to be reading books appropriate for their age (often not the case in secondary – particularly for boys)
  • In addition to teaching vocabulary explicitly, teachers need to model how expert readers read actively including monitoring their understanding, asking questions, making predictions and summarising (Rosenshine)

So how does a Religious Studies student read?

This is a vital question for teachers of religious studies/education yet it is rarely given any consideration in primary or secondary training.

Take the following example as given in ‘Closing the reading Gap’ by Alex Quigley.

“The third pillar of Islam is Zakah. This means giving alms (giving money to the poor). For Muslims who have enough savings it is compulsory to give 2.5 percent of those savings every year to help the poor.  Many Muslims will work out how much they owe and give the money at the end of Ramadan.

By giving Zakah, Muslims are acknowledging that everything they own comes from God and belongs to him and they should use their wealth to remember God and give to those in need. It frees people from desire and teaches self-discipline and honesty.

Zakah literally means to purify or to cleanse.  Muslims believe that giving Zakah helps to purify the soul, removing selfishness and greed.”

You will probably recognise that you are using your background knowledge about Islam (tier 3 vocabulary –subject-specific).  You will also be using your understanding of words that are so familiar to us that we often do not notice pupils will not know them for example ‘compulsory’, ‘acknowledging’, ‘self-discipline’ (tier 2 vocabulary –academic vocabulary)

To read this single passage demands knowledge of the world or reading of text structures and word knowledge.  If a teacher has not considered the teaching of reading, it can be hard to know whether pupils are understanding what has been read at all! To comprehend a text, you need to understand 95% of the words. An average text contains 300 words a page so that means 15 words may be unknown even if the gist of the text is understood.

We need to ask ourselves:

  • How ‘word conscious’ are we in our lessons?
  • Has tier 2 & 3 vocabulary been considered as part of a sequence in our schemes of learning and assessment?

So what practical strategies can we adopt?

1. Keyword vocabulary lists with quick quiz tests.
Key concept Definition
Trinity The Christian belief that there is One God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit
Nicene Creed A Christian statement of faith primarily about the nature of God. Accepted by the majority of Christians
Creation The Creation of the universe regarded as an act of God
Benevolent All-loving
Omnipotent All-powerful
Resurrection The belief that Jesus rose from the dead after three days. The belief that the body stays in the grave until the end of the world when it is raised and judged
Atonement The reconciliation of God and humanity accomplished through the life, suffering, and death of Christ
2. Consider strategies for teaching tier 2 vocabulary

Teach synonyms

Required – have to, Tend – look after, Fortunate – lucky, Benevolent – kind

The ‘golden triangle’ of recognition, pronunciation and definition

Recognition – how is the word spelt? The ability to use phonics to decode new vocabulary and then to be able to reproduce the spelling makes a big difference.

Pronunciation – how is the word said? Making pupils say it aloud and use it in a sentence increases the likelihood they will remember it.

Definition – what does the word mean? It might sound obvious, but if you know the meaning of a word, you are much more likely to remember it.

Here is an example on an RS exam paper with a lack of understanding of tier 2 vocabulary

3.Explicitly modelling what expert readers do: activating prior knowledge, predicting, questioning, clarifying, summarising
4. Setting reading homework

At The Queen Katherine School, we have attempted to make reading routine by carefully planning it home works that link with the Scheme of Learning.

3,2,1 Readers are questioning, evaluating and connecting what they read. For example, three essential points to consider, connect and remember, two key vocabulary items to know, use and remember and one big idea to understand, explain and remember.

The resource ‘The Day’ is invaluable at supporting this.

https://theday.co.uk

5. Include more planned reading in the lessons

In consultation with our fabulous librarian, we have chosen short stories that complement our Schemes of Learning at KS3. Students will read a short excerpt in the first 5 mins of the lesson and as a class, we will discuss 3 planned questions based on the reading.  These books are age-specific for our learners.

Conclusion

Alex Quigley makes the point, ‘it is important to view academic reading through a subject-specific lens in all phases of schooling.’

By paying attention to the disciplinary lenses used in RE we can best support our students to use subject-specific reading strategies alongside general reading strategies. However, does this open up another can of worms! What ‘different ways’ should religion and world views be studied?  The Commission talks about Theology, Human and Social Science and Philosophy (Mark Chater Reforming RE Chapter 9)  yet this does still remain contested. ‘See Disciplinary literacy in religious education: the role and relevance of reading https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01416200.2020.1754164

See also https://missdcoxblog.wordpress.com/2020/11/01/disciplinary-discourse-using-subject-vocabulary/

How does your school promote reading?

  • in the wider curriculum
  • in departments
  • in your classrooms

With thanks to Alex Quigley ‘Closing the Reading Gap’

Katherine France a Head of Faculty at The Queen Katherine School and North Regional Ambassador @KathFrance1975

 

The Importance of the Child in Your RE

The return of children to school this September must surely be one of the most talked-about issues for all of us this year. Even families who do not have people specifically affected by the return to school will be aware of the importance of schools opening again and the impact this will have on their local community.

At such a time, it is really important to begin our RE planning with the children themselves and their experiences of lockdown and afterward at the heart of our planning. It is also important to recognise their feelings as they return to school with excitement, relief or anxiety, or perhaps a mix of all three. For those of us who work in R.E., it is natural that we will be thinking about how much study children have missed and many of us will have been reflecting on this over the summer break. However, this year in particular it is more important than ever that we pause and remember why we are so passionate about R.E. and why it is so valuable in helping our children to begin this new school year acknowledging their experiences and feelings on their return to school and using such experiences to help consider their own beliefs and opinions in RE.

The NATRE website has some useful reminders for us all about the purpose of RE in the section “About RE”:

Religious Education contributes dynamically to children and young people’s education in schools by provoking challenging questions about meaning and purpose in life, beliefs about God, ultimate reality, issues of right and wrong and what it means to be human. In RE they learn about and from religions and worldviews in local, national and global contexts, to discover, explore and consider different answers to these questions. They learn to weigh up the value of wisdom from different sources, to develop and express their insights in response, and to agree or disagree respectfully.

There has never been a more pertinent time for us all to hold these principles in mind, whatever Locally Agreed Syllabus we follow,  as we plan for children’s enquiries in this new school year and use these principles to consider how we can plan for meaningful RE.

Let’s consider how we might use these aims in the term ahead in RE:

  • Provoking challenging questions about meaning and purpose in life – allow children the time and space in RE to share how lockdown and coming out of lockdown has been for them as individuals, their families, and communities here and around the world (many for example might have families that are or were separated around the world). What was meaningful and what was challenging? Did it make them question the way life was before lockdown? Why? Has it provoked questions for them about their own community and the world? How did they adapt? Has it made a difference in their own family going forward? How?
  • Beliefs about God – has it made any of the children in the class think differently about their beliefs? Has it changed the way they view the environment, society, and the concept of God? How? Has the experience made them reflect more or less on these issues? Why?
  • Issues of right and wrong – did the experience make the children think about issues of right and wrong more or less? What examples do they have of their own local communities doing things well and for the benefit of others? Did they get to know their neighbours better? Did they do anything differently for others? Were there any things that they saw as wrong? Why? What should we change and what should we keep going forward?
  • What does it mean to be human? What things did they and their family miss doing? Do they still miss doing these things? What things don’t they miss from the way life was? Why? What needs do we all have as humans?
  • What religious and non-religious responses to the situation can we share with children? Did anyone’s families watch religious services on-line? Which ones? Why do you think they did that? Did anyone’s families join groups on-line that were non-religious but gave them feelings of belonging, such as neighborhood groups, craft groups, sports groups and interest groups? Why? Did any such groups do special things for others? Why did they do this do you think?
  • Where did they gain their own advice and wisdom from? What advice did they find most useful during lockdown? Who gave them the advice? Did they share such advice with others? What advice or wisdom will they take with them going forward?

By taking the time to reflect on the purpose of R.E. by asking these questions will help you and the children reflect on your experiences during the past six months and think about what this means in R.E. it will allow you to consider the big questions that R.E. is so wonderful for generating right from the start of your first lesson with the children.

Enjoy your time enquiring together, there has never been a more important time for R.E. together!

Justine Ball, NATRE ambassador for the South East, Hampshire Adviser/Inspector for Primary RE, Joint Chair of AREIAC with Julia Diamond Conway @justineballRE

New to leading RE

If you have been ‘lumbered with being the subject leader for RE’, you may now feel (even more) daunted about going back in September. The journey ahead isn’t going to be always easy, but you will have lots of joy along the way and will hopefully not feel lumbered.

Firstly, let me start by welcoming you to the best community of teachers and advisers. There are a host of passionate people and organisations cheering you on and available for support (I’ll share some key ones at the end of this blog).

Here are some things to get you things you started with leading:

Aim high: Vision and purpose

It is important to know what you are aiming for and this will be underpinned by the purpose of RE. There are many answers to the questions around purpose, so don’t be put off by the numerous names for RE! Having purpose and vision will ensure senior leaders understand its value, and this in turn can feed into the whole school vision too. RE can enhance the whole curriculum, but this should not mean that the quality of it is watered down by allowing it to be taught through other subjects like PSHE or through assemblies. Be firm about the importance of the subject and its necessity as a stand-alone subject of a balanced curriculum.

You may find it useful to read the recent Commission on RE report (CORE) Some of its main findings relate to purpose, including the need quality teaching with a rigorous and rich analysis of both religious and non-religious worldviews and their impact on communities and individuals.

Rich and rigorous: The curriculum

It’s good for you as the lead to understand about developments within the subject as well as things which will affect it. The National Entitlement proposal is in line with Ofsted’s expectations that RE teachers will be able to talk about the subject’s purpose and quality of the curriculum.

The Agreed Syllabus

All maintained schools have a statutory duty to teach RE, including academies and free schools. Without a national curriculum, the RE curriculum is determined by the local Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education (SACRE) and they are responsible for creating a Locally Agreed Syllabus which should reflect the local faiths and will be predominantly Christian. If you are in a faith school, you can prioritise one religion, but you should still recognise the diverse faiths and non-religious worldviews too. Your Agreed Syllabus will detail the amount of time given to RE (despite how many senior leaderships will try to merge it with PSHE or do drop-down days) so make sure your pupils are getting what they are entitled to.

In a C of E school, you will have a Diocesan syllabus to follow.

With the current Ofsted framework, it will be useful for you to think about your curriculum plans with the 3 Is in mind.

Intent– what’s the purpose of learning in the topics and why are they learning it?

Implementation– how does the planning and teaching meet the curriculum aims? How do you assess this?

Impact– how can you see that learning has taken place? A rich, systematic, and coherent curriculum will have a positive impact on the children in your care.

Not alone: Engaging with support

The best thing about leading RE is the wealth of support out there.

NATRE (National Association for Teachers of RE) is a great place to start. There are a range of packages to choose from in terms of membership with books and magazines delivered termly, and there are a whole load of downloadable resources to find there. There are some great ideas about assessment there too (I haven’t gone there in this blog as assessment is so varied from school to school. You need to find the way that works best for you, in line with the school’s system.)

NATRE also believes in the importance of networking and almost 300 local groups are meeting across the country. Check out this page to find a local group or connect with your regional ambassador.

Culham St Gabriel’s provide lots of excellent support in terms of developing your leadership and subject knowledge skills. You’ll also find super resources, blogs, and interactive support on their RE Online site.

RE Quality Mark There is a fabulous audit for your department on their site so you can think carefully about what you offer and how learning is effective in your school. I recommend going for the award once you’re settled into leading your department.

Ready for anything: A checklist

There will be plenty of time to gather all the things together in your subject leader file. I’ve been leading RE for 19 years now and still haven’t got everything complete! Don’t feel that you have to have everything ready for September, but there’s a great list here which you may find useful: https://www.reonline.org.uk/leading-re/a-practical-checklist/

There’s so much I could cover, but for now, I want to wish you all the best with your RE leadership journey. I am sure you’ll find many passionate people in the RE community who are cheering you on and want to support you.

Sarah Payne subject leader for RE and PSHCE at Woodland Middle School and the South Central Regional Ambassador. @SPayneRE

How To Create Your Own Local RE Group

“If you want to go fast go alone, if you want to go far go together”– African proverb

Networking is integral to our vision and to our growth. YorkshiR.E was born out of the desire to learn and grow from individuals who I knew were better and more experienced than me. I firmly believe that this purpose of the group was what ignited the flame that inspired me to pursue it. We have been very fortunate to attract the attention of RE enthusiasts from all over the UK. As a result, we feel privileged to have been asked to provide some guidance on how to develop your own local groups.

Clear vision:

Peter Drucker explains clearly that “culture eats strategy for breakfast” establishing the right culture to your group is a vital starting point before going any further. If strategy is the road then, then culture is the engine in the car that gets you there. There are three questions when vision setting for any project which helps give clear and concise direction.

What do we want to achieve?

Why do we want to achieve it?

How are we going to do it?

Strategy:

When leading a local group and developing a strategy for growth, humility has to be at the forefront. It’s not about who’s right, it’s about getting it right. YorkshiR.E is affiliated with NATRE as a result we found that utilising the expertise of NATRE was critical to our decision making. Recognising expertise and talents around you is a key skill to have in order to apply those skills to the relevant areas and watch the project fly.

We identified that marketing was key, fortunately, NATRE already had templates that can be used and are professional. We recognised particularly during lockdown that social media was going to be a useful tool in promoting the group. We had worked together to create an agenda publish it and share it on as many social media areas as possible. Linkedin, Twitter, and of course SAVE RE on Facebook. We also utilised the further contacts that NATRE had, which we didn’t have and this also saw the group grow.

Communication:

Communication is a key area that determines the successes and failures of a group. It was very tempting to stick to emails and continue playing email ping pong but as our group continued to grow from having an expectation of around 5-10 enthusiasts join to 64 signing up. Clear communication is what has helped the group grow. Using zoom meetings has saved time and stress when communicating and during the communication, it is vital that you allow any member of that meeting to be as vulnerable as they need to be. Simon Sinek speaks of how allowing people to show their vulnerabilities leads to progress as it addresses the concerns swiftly and appropriately. When we had a meeting of 64 to organise. There were some moments where we had to be open and honest about some of the obstacles we faced. However, each member of the team allowed each other to be open and become solution-focused through effective questioning and listening.

Emotional intelligence:

Daniel Goleman outlines 4 areas there are to emotional intelligence. Self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. On this occasion, I’m going to focus on social awareness. It is important to know what your group wants for the meetings you provide. We put together online surveys that enable our enthusiasts to feedback on what they liked about our meetings, areas of development, and areas they would like to address in future meetings. This isn’t always easy but necessary for the growth of your group as you are then making a conscious effort to evolve.

Mistakes are learnings:

There is so much research available currently that suggests that we learn the most through mistakes. This is far from easy to put into practice but you must be willing to make mistakes. This is one of the things I told myself before starting. In order to learn and grow am I willing to make mistakes and on occasion have them pointed out? My answer was yes as I felt the benefits of pursuing this outweighs the risk of making a mistake. I know that running a local group and networking has made me a better practitioner. I acknowledge that there will be attendees that are better and a lot more experienced than me. The best part is, is that it’s not just me learning from our best talent, it’s everyone else too!

If you want more information on local groups, please click here.

Ashish Kundi is Head of RE and PSHE at Bridlington School and Leader of YorkshiR.E @ashish_kund

Getting the most out of visits to places of worship- KS1 & KS2

As an RE teacher, I love visiting places of worship but what I enjoy even more is taking the children that I teach to them. A visit to a place of worship can be a rich experience that sits at the heart of good RE: challenging, inspiring, and thought provoking-a feast for the senses and an event full of enjoyment that can be the springboard for so much rich learning. Having experienced intense, anti-religious sentiments from some parents, it made me even more determined to ensure that colleagues were supported in planning and delivering these rich experiences that help tackle fear and misunderstanding. Even the youngest of our pupils can get so much out of a visit to a sacred space and the effort that you put in is well worth the gains. Here are some ways of getting the most of your visit to a place of worship:

Plan ahead Look at your long and medium-term plan and identify the best units of work for using a visit to support the learning. It should be part of a carefully planned sequence of learning with opportunities for reflection and response to the ‘hands-on’ experience that a visit brings.

Focus Ensure your visit has a clear focus. In the same way that we treat other visits linked to subject areas or topics, we should ensure that the visit has a clear focus on what you intend the pupils to get out of it. This focus will also be different for each year group to ensure progression and linking to that all-important medium-term plan.

Preparation Prepare the children for the visit. Posing and eliciting some questions prior to the visit will hopefully inspire the children to visit with an open and questioning mind. Pupils will get more out of the visit if they know what it is they are looking for and hoping to learn about. It will also give them a chance to come up with more meaningful and relevant questions while they are there.

Support Ensure all adults who will be accompanying you know what the focus of the visit is and have some key background information on the faith that is being explored. Places of worship often have suggested dress codes so ensure the staff are aware of these to save any embarrassment on the day. As ratios are higher with Key Stage 1 and early years, it is often common practice to borrow teaching assistants from other year groups or to enlist the support of parent helpers; if they know what the focus of the visit is, then they can help support learning more effectively.

Build on the new links you have made or the existing links you have strengthened with local faith communities. They are a wealth of help and support when teaching RE. Places of worship come alive when used and faith members are usually more than happy to share their own experience of their lived faith and how they practice what they believe. Use this opportunity to invite them to school to continue what you started on the visit.

Revisit-Whenever it fits into your long and medium-term plan, take the opportunity to revisit and build on the learning. Children need this to ensure new learning sticks and to begin to make those all-important links! The most powerful thing I have witnessed in school is when a  faith member became a regular at school-whether through their visits to the school or through visits the children had made to their place of worship that year or in the previous year.  It helped the children to see that faith and faith member as not ‘other, but as just another friend and part of their community who they could have an open dialogue with and learn from one another.

Visits done well will keep building on the children’s understanding of the range of faiths and cultures that compromise our society and how they, and themselves, fit within it. See them as an integral part of good RE and an essential way of breaking down some of the barriers that exist within our communities. By removing the unknown and making them welcoming and accessible not separate and ‘other’.

Visit the NATRE website for relevant resources:

https://www.natre.org.uk/resources/team-mosque/

http://www.natre.org.uk/resources/our-team-model-church-pp-14-16/ 

Julie Childs, Primary teacher and RE, SMSC, PSHE, and RSE lead at Utterby Primary Academy, Lincolnshire, and Regional ambassador for East Midlands. @JulieChilds12

The Baby in the Bathwater… Rejuvenating a primary Religion and Worldviews curriculum

I have come to think of our RE curriculum as my “baby”, something our team has nurtured. But lately, maybe that baby has been splashing about in a bath cluttered with far too many pointless plastic toys. Bear with me with this metaphor…

First, a little bit of context. I am a HLTA and I’ve been leading RE at our three-form entry Primary for about 10 years. Our Head Teacher took RE seriously, she took our HLTA subject development seriously and, perhaps most empowering, she takes me seriously (many HLTAs will understand the importance of being taken seriously). Before we took over RE as a PPA cover subject, our team were lucky enough to have three days of training with Mary Myatt on how to use the Suffolk Agreed syllabus to plan our curriculum and what good RE should look like. (Three days with Mary Myatt, these are the things RE dreams are made of right?)

This stood our team in good stead to throw out the dull worksheets and start from scratch with our curriculum planning. Not for us, an off-the-peg scheme, it was important that this was something we developed and planned from the bedrock. We built a curriculum with strong foundations, with a focus on Mary’s message that a great curriculum can be difficult and beautiful. As an RI school things were tough, as a new subject team, things were tough. We made mistakes along the way, but, through CPD, network engagement and connecting with faith groups in development projects, we grew in subject knowledge and classroom confidence. Once established, we used the REQM criteria

http://www.reqm.org/achieving-the-award/how-to-apply to build a three year plan of improvement. In 2016 we earned the Gold REQM. We are a cracking team and we have worked hard to ensure what happens in our RE lessons is high quality.

Hard slog. So why, given how good we knew our curriculum to be, bother with a rewrite? Maybe because what was considered best practice 10 years ago, is not now visionary enough. Times change, maybe more so in a subject where we are reflecting on the people and society around us, a society whose worldviews are in a constant state of flux (just think how your worldview has been influenced by recent events). This is a problem I have seen in a number of schools, where effort may have been put in to initial curriculum development, but nothing has been looked at since, nothing updated, nothing developed and the plans have been passed on like Chinese Whispers, until the deliverer of a “scheme” has no background knowledge or investment in the learning.

The more I developed my subject knowledge, and witnessed the opportunities others were offering in their lessons (not just RE), the more I questioned the why of what I was teaching. Over the last few years I have been asking myself, and my team, a lot of questions about our RE curriculum. We began with moving away from the old “learning from” AT2 with a greater emphasis on philosophical questioning. We considered the recommendations of the CoRE report – the name change to Religion and Worldviews, appealed to our team and our learners. I know there is much debate on “what’s in a name?”, but for us, moving from the verb “religious” to the noun form “religion” is transformative. One thing I have always been sure of (but perhaps parents misconceive): we are NOT teaching children how to be religious.

I love edutwitter – in it I find nuggets of wisdom and debate that encapsulate my sometimes incoherent thoughts, I bookmark a lot of things, then go away and dig deeper until things crystalise in my mind. This tweet from Christine Counsell, last year, spoke to my perfect curriculum-seeking self. There is no goal – continuing renewal and ownership drives our development.

twitter post

Ben Arscott in Impact journal in 2018 https://impact.chartered.college/article/designing-a-secular-religious-studies-curriculum/

“The  review  process should  be constant, although  it is helpful to have periodical formal reviews  with the whole department and  outsiders. During these reviews,  it is crucial to remember that no  curriculum is perfect and time is severely  limited.”

While taking part in a Leading Active Learning research project 4 years ago, I developed an embarrassingly ham-fisted approach to disciplinary teaching in our RE curriculum. In an effort to improve our learners’ religious literacy, I introduced “Pupils as Theologians”. This was successful on a small scale, but the more I dug, the more I realised this wasn’t enough, perhaps I was still too inward looking at our own school, too bound to the curriculum “baby” our team had developed, I was only tweaking the edges without being truly informed, I suspected it was actually time for what Matthew Lane calls a “curriculum revolution” https://www.reonline.org.uk/blog/how-i-brought-about-a-curriculum-revolution-in-re-matthew-lane/.

I secretly knew, it was time to drain the bath and begin to dispose of the mouldy toys.

When I took on the NATRE East Anglia Regional Ambassador role just over a year ago, I had a telephone call with Kathryn Wright, and when she told me about the Multidisciplinary approach Norfolk were implementing in their Syllabus I knew this was what I’d been looking for. RE or RW has been craving discipline, I felt our learning was ill-disciplined and the clarity of this approach was inspiring. How might this approach provide learning parameters for our ill-disciplined “baby”?

I went on to read what I could about the approach, including  Gillian Georgiou’s Impact Article on Balance RE https://impact.chartered.college/article/balanced-re-thoughts-re-curriculum-design/

The approach was developed by RE advisers Jane Chipperton, Gillian Georgiou, Olivia Seymour and Kathryn Wright.

https://www.lincolndiocesaneducation.com/page/?title=RE+Resources+%26amp%3B+balancedRE&pid=32

At last year’s AREIAC conference, I heard Ben Wood and Richard Kueh speak about the approach. This was it, the knowledge-rich, disciplinary plurality of thinking I was looking for. You can read Richard’s take in RE Today (Autumn 2019). Adam Smith’s blog is an interesting reflection, https://mrsmithre.home.blog/2019/10/06/disciplinary-knowledge-and-re-an-attempt-at-professional-wrestling/

As the bathwater drained, I saw beyond the bubbles and steam. Even before the whole curriculum rewrite, our learners were ready this year to be introduced, right from year 2, to the disciplinary concepts of Theology, Philosophy, and Social sciences. We began with the etymology and built up our ideas of the skill sets involved along with categorising our growing knowledge. Finally, we felt clarity, the steam was beginning to clear.

I began plugging multidisciplinary while working with our Trust RE leads on a Trust-wide curriculum rationale, encouraging our RE leads to use the RE Online: Religion and Worldviews in a broad and balanced curriculum, A practical tool. https://www.reonline.org.uk/leading-re/re-in-a-broad-and-balanced-curriculum-a-practical-tool/ . when considering their curriculum choices.

All the while waiting, with bated breath, for the Norfolk Syllabus to be released. I’m an RE geek, what can I say?

When it finally arrived, I was excited to begin working with our team to tailor the approach of the new syllabus into a curriculum specific to our setting. We’re an academy, we can choose our curriculum – lucky us! But those of you bound by your Locally Agreed Syllabus can still consider a multidisciplinary approach in your planning, you may be bound legally by content, but not by pedagogy. The Norfolk Syllabus is great way to start thinking about this approach https://www.schools.norfolk.gov.uk/School-management/SACRE/index.htm .

Our new curriculum has been a year in the design, the last few weeks in lockdown have given our team unprecedented time to construct, plan and resource a challenging, disciplinary-focused primary Curriculum. We’re good to go from September. As always, we will be continually reviewing our curriculum, not just because it’s a process I can’t get enough of, but because ongoing rejuvenation of our practise is the only way we can ensure continuing quality. In truth, our curriculum possibly had well considered content, we just didn’t have a clear focus for the skill set. We were ill-disciplined. It was always our baby – a curriculum content with value – it needed to get out of the bath and get dressed, ambitiously, for the occasion.

 

Written by Katie Gooch, regional ambassador for East Anglia  Follow Katie on twitter at @goochkt

RE and Thinking skills

RE and Thinking skills

I have loved thinking skills throughout my teaching career, I love trying new ones, and adapting trusted ones, I think this is because as a RE teacher these skills are definitely needed to do our subject justice.

Thinking skills can be categorised as an activity that helps to develop logical reasoning to solve any problems or tasks. However, critical thinking helps the learner to develop the evaluative, judgmental, monitoring, and appraisal thinking capacity to solve the problems, in RE, I am much more interested in critical thinking skills.

“Critical thinking – the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe – is an essential skill.” Jonathan Sharples

“In education, critical thinking is not a new concept: at the beginning of the last century, Dewey identified the need to help students to ‘think well’ (Dewey, 1910). Critical thinking encompasses a broad set of skills and dispositions, including cognitive skills (e.g. analysis, inference and self-regulation); approaches to specific questions or problems (e.g. orderliness, diligence and reasonableness); and approaches to life in general (e.g. inquisitiveness, concern with being well informed, and open-mindedness) (Facione, 1990). An increasing body of evidence highlights the benefits of developing critical thinking skills, in terms of academic outcomes as well as wider reasoning and problem-solving capabilities.” (Higgins et al., 2016).

Understanding the beliefs of others, as well as pupils own beliefs is almost impossible to do without being proficient in critical thinking skills in RE, they are part of our DNA as a teacher. Pupils learn so much more in a topic if they have had to process information using these activities not just learning and writing about them.

Having set the scene, this week my three favourite critical thinking skills in RE are:

Dart board tasks – I was first taught this one by Lat Blaylock over 20 years ago, but I still use it all the time across all age ranges from EYFS – KS5. It is more flexible than a diamond nine or pyramid task, it is visual and can help pupils with key concepts or ideas within and between religions and Worldviews.

I recently created one for secondary pupils looking at quotations from religious leaders and holy books on ecology. I asked pupils in year 9 to place the quote they thought was the most important on the bullseye and then place a quotation on each concentric circle going out from the bullseye (there were 5 on my dartboard).

Students should work in groups always when doing this task, in groups of 3 pupils or 5’s – odd numbers help to make decisions more quickly, helping the group to decide where to place their top 5 quotes and why. Then you ask groups to justify their positions to their peers, challenging and building upon different groups ideas. This thinking skill builds analysis, inference, orderliness, reasonableness, and open-mindedness.

Giving more cards to a group makes the task more complex, less cards easier.

Same, similar or different task – a Venn diagrams with 3 circles – as old as anything! A year 6 task I set recently was to look at what was different about 3 religious leaders (An Iman, A Christian Priest, A Hindu Priest), then what did they all share, and finally what do two share that the other one doesn’t – this is the challenging part of this skill, and pupils often struggle as it does involve real thinking and often extra research to discover the answers. A great task for KS2 and KS3 in RE. This thinking skill builds analysis, diligence, orderliness, reasonableness, inquisitiveness, and open-mindedness.

Finally, something new – I try and create a total new thinking skills game each year! My latest is a game I have called ‘patchwork thinking’, and so far, I have used for KS1,2 3 & 4! It gives pupils a blank patchwork quilt and a number of cards with quotes, symbols, pictures or keywords on them and asks pupils in table groups to fill in the quilt. The easier version of the game says to put a card down to need to be able to say a link to any other card it touches horizontally or vertically. The harder version asks pupils to do that as well as vertically. This thinking skill builds analysis, orderliness, reasonableness, appraise, and evaluation.

 

(KS2 pupils playing patchwork thinking game)

So why not think about how you could bring more of these key skills into your RE lessons, they may make your class complain about their head aching, but the reward they will feel as they create big pictures of the learning, make links between ideas and concepts collaboratively will have them asking for another one!

Claire Clinton, RE ambassador for London @Claireclinton67

 

Let’s talk curriculum planning, online learning and quarantine.

As I sit at my makeshift desk at home, I could not have imagined a month ago that we would be in the middle of a pandemic and thinking about the restrictions and changes to our everyday lives.  Being a teacher means something very different this week than it did a month ago and yet some key things have not changed.  We still want the very best for our school community and want to enrich the lives of our pupils as best we can.   Ordinarily we would be teaching classes full of pupils, and through the resources we have and the experiences we offer enabling them to explore the wider world, exploring religions and worldviews, engaging with sacred text,  asking big questions about life, the universe and everything.

Yet in the midst of these strange times, Religious Education is as important as ever. Someone said to me last week, we are living in a chapter of the history books.  Perhaps we are living in a chapter of the RE books too.

Places of worship are closed, something I certainly never envisaged happening in my lifetime.  How people connect with others, engage in the world around them and how different communities worship is adapting and changing in the context of these strange times.  People are unconnected physically but exploring what it means to be connected virtually.

The many images and stories are a great opportunity for us to highlight the diversity of practice within religions and worldviews for our pupils and move beyond ‘textbook RE’

In the RE classroom, we can help our pupils both now and when things return to ‘normal’ navigate the big questions that arise in times like this and explore the responses.

Whether you are curriculum planning, still in school supporting key workers, or struggling to think of what we should be doing, firstly be kind to yourself.  Your wellbeing and that of your family is the most important thing. Then I hope this sample of ideas might help you:

For your own professional development:

Teach RE have launched a fabulous free self-study module for all those planning to teach, or already teaching religion and worldviews (RE) in schools. https://www.teachre.co.uk/teach-re-course/teachre-free-self-study-module/

Explore research in RE https://researchforre.reonline.org.uk/

Take time to read and reflect:  Reforming RE by Mark Chater has chapters from different voices in the world of RE looking at change in our subject.  https://www.johncattbookshop.com/reforming-religious-education

Listen to some podcasts:  https://www.religiousstudiesproject.com/2019/06/18/discourse-8-june-2019/

https://thepanpsycast.com/

Focus on developing your own subject knowledge: https://www.reonline.org.uk/

https://global.oup.com/academic/content/series/v/very-short-introductions-vsi/?cc=gb&lang=en&

Curriculum planning:

I know many will want to use any time available to plan ahead and think about next year.  Curriculum conversations have very much been at the heart of our work this year.  Here are some resources to help you reflect on creating a meaningful RE curriculum and being able to tell the story of the learning journey your pupils go on in RE.

RE in a broad and balanced curriculum: A broad and balanced tool: https://www.reonline.org.uk/leading-re/re-in-a-broad-and-balanced-curriculum-a-practical-tool/

Intent, Implementation, Impact: https://www.natre.org.uk/uploads/Member%20Resources/RE%20Today%20Resources/RE%20today%20magazine/autumn%202019/Ofsted%20new%20framework%202019-UPDATED.pdf

Online learning:

RE Today is supporting NATRE by providing resources which you can use and share with parents to support home learning. https://www.natre.org.uk/about-natre/free-resources-for-you-and-your-pupils/

New, free BBC Bitesize RE content for Key Stage 3 designed for pupils to use themselves: There are 22 new short films with accompanying information and activities https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/zh3rkqt

REOnline have produced some home learning resources for RE https://www.reonline.org.uk/supporting-re/

Explore the sacred texts of the world’s great faiths : https://www.bl.uk/sacred-texts

Written by Olivia Seymour, Regional ambassador for the North East.  Follow Olivia on twitter at @Ollyseymour 

10 steps to increase the presence of RE in your school

With RE curriculum time being squeezed in many schools, coupled with financial restraints, we as RE teachers must be increasingly intentional towards raising the profile of RE in our schools! Here are some top tips on how to increase the presence and gravitas of RE in your school, getting the much deserved attention our beloved subject needs.

  1. Start with the pupils – Enable those who are passionate to support the subject by being ‘part’ of the RE department, e.g. pupil voice forums, contributing ideas to meetings, help with organising visitors, trips, displays or starting a Youth SACRE. Our colleagues over at RE Online have published a great blog on starting a youth SACRE which can hopefully give you some inspiration. You can also encourage ex-pupils who have taken RS related degrees at University to come back and speak to pupils about the merits of RE; sometimes its better coming from them, and enables open discussion encouraged by familiarity.
  2. Find support and partnerships – There are so many high-quality courses to support RE teacher, both paid and unpaid. Additionally, you can make contact with a local NATRE group, schools in your local area or region and Universities to develop links.  There are many different ways of developing your own subject knowledge through amazing websites such as Teach RE.
  3. All pupils have an entitlement to RE – Find out about the legal requirements for compulsory for all pupils in state funded schools, including academies. It is also worth making your SLT and governors aware that RE is being scrutinised more under the new Ofsted framework; there are over 101 comments on RE from recent inspections, available for you to read.
  4. Obtain funding – Do you have limited time or money to deliver the RE you want to? There are many different sources of funding for resources that RE teachers are unaware of. This is an exciting and detailed topic, which we have discussed on Teachers Talk before. Have another read if you’re looking to boost your RE budgets.
  5. Complete a 360 review of the dept – The RE Quality Mark is one way of completing a 360 review of your RE department. To obtain the mark, your schools’ pupils fill in questionnaires.  This could lead to changing schemes of work, developing pupils’ religious literacy skills, using more stories, encouraging deep learning and giving choice in homework/creative projects.
  6. Emphasise how RE is relevant to the job market and the life-skills it provides. Projects such as the “Case studies” from RE Online will assist you to emphasise the academic rigour of the course, especially the careers it relates too.
  7. Have a display of past success – Utilise public areas in your school to showcase pictures from RE trips, visits and quotes from current pupils and ex-pupils about the Universities they went to and the diversity of academic subjects they read. Case studies and success examples  help individuals understand and materialise their potential.
  8. Change hearts and minds. Explain to pupils what potential they have in the course and celebrate recent achievements. Speaking to parents, as well as sending emails and letters and a simple phone call can help challenge misconceptions of the subject. If you really want to open people’s hearts to RE, why not invite parents and governors on trips to see the fantastic knowledge and cultural capital that RE delivers?
  9. Develop cross curricular links with other subjects – RE makes a significant contribution to SMSC, PSD and other subjects “… we know that a rigorous religious education acts as a Rosetta Stone between different subjects: unlocking our ability to make links and understand the great advances in science, politics, commerce, the arts and history.” Nick Gibb (Minister of State -2012). For schools with limited resources, time or budget provisioned for RE, combining Religious Education with cross-curricular activities can open new doors.
  10. Use media to help promote the status of RE. Podcasts, websites and networking with other RE teachers will help to support one another as a community to help ‘Save RE’!  Twitter is a great source of CPD with many RE teachers sharing advice, resources and ideas online. You could enter competitions, for essays or Spirited Arts, or complete an activity in Interfaith Week and invite the local press in. Not only does this grow your school’s presence in the community, it paints the school in a good light and increases the reputation, which every head and School Business manager will appreciate!

Written by Chris Giles, Regional ambassador for West Midlands.  Follow Chris’ schools RE department on twitter at www.twitter.com/sbhsrs or his individual twitter at www.twitter.com/chris_giles_

No Time for Global Learning!

Two years ago, I was fortunate to be able to complete a Farmington’s Scholarship with this very title. It came from leading a Global Learning Expert Centre at my primary school where I was providing CPD for a network of 24 schools. Attendees loved the idea of Global Learning in principal but struggled to find a way to include it in their curriculum. My Farmington’s developed resources which created opportunities for Global Learning within RE provision. This blog is my thoughts for how you can assist with developing children to be more active and globally aware in RE.

Firstly, look at the Global Learning Skills. Oxfam list these as;

  • Critical and creative thinking
  • Empathy
  • Self-awareness and reflection
  • Communication
  • Co-operation and conflict resolution
  • Ability to manage complexity and uncertainty
  • Informed and reflective action

I then use these skills when designing schemes of work, aiming to include activities which develop these skills and explaining to the children which Global Learning Skill we are developing today. Taking one of these areas to give you some examples on “managing complexity and uncertainty” the sort of opportunities for learning I would facilitate may include;

  • P4C on Heaven and Hell or role of prayer, exploring own views, views of peers and compare with faith beliefs

 

  • Consider how throughout history people have maintained their faith through times of uncertainty, e.g. genocide, Holocaust, migration, if your life changed suddenly what would you want to keep

 

  • Respond to RE related news events including controversial issues, giving children space to reflect, find out what happened and compare views, answering questions honestly showing age appropriate awareness

 

  • Discuss Extremism, Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, what may have led people to have extreme views and what can we do about it if we encounter prejudice today

At the start of a session, when explaining the intent, I would explain which skill we are including today. Ask the children why it is an important Global Learning Skill and how I am going to be awarding team points for those who demonstrate empathy / communication / co-operation etc. There can then be time to feedback on how they have used those skills at the end of the lesson.

 

Some tips for thinking globally in RE

  • Develop sustained links with your faith visitors booking them on a regular basis so children can link aspects of faith with a believer they have met. Using questions link “How do you think …. would answer your query?” makes it more relevant and develops respect and empathy. Remember to promote diversity, “Some Christians may believe……but other Christians may say …….” Build in age appropriate technical terms.

 

  • Developing questioning techniques with progressive expectations, give children clues but ask them to develop the question and enquiry, make them the detectives, learn about different sorts of questions and how to design them. With younger children ask them to “I wonder……?” when looking at a religious photograph.

 

  • Look at the wider world not just RE in your own locality. Look at places of worship around the world, photographs of worshippers in a variety of communities, how is the same festival celebrated in different or similar ways.

 

  • Whole school approaches which promote Global Learning themes like One World Weeks to raise profile of Global Learning, don’t just teach about different countries, include recent issues and key themes.

 

  • Use Philosophy for Children as a regular method for enquiry-based learning, you are developing children as critical thinkers, listeners who value and learn from each other developing respect and an acknowledgement that you can change your opinions. Use a belief line as a warmup strategy and revisit at the end to see how opinions may have changed.

 

  • Use pictorial charts to remind children about Global Learning, refer to the Global Development Goals use a Global Dimension or Religious Calendar as a wall chart in the classroom for children to keep an eye on key religious events around the world. Purchase RE resources from around the world and look at the packages they arrive in with the class. Map where the artefact came from and its journey to the UK.

 

  • Push your international partnerships to more than just being pen pals with a display of smiling faces on the wall. Meet face to face, host pupil visits, ask meaningful questions and share RE projects with each other. If you don’t have an international school link, try Connecting Classrooms through the British Council.

 

  • Allow time for children to discuss topical events they may have seen on the news the evening before but don’t always respond to the issue straight away. It’s perfectly ok to say that you will come back to this in a day when you have found our more information. There may also be resources online by then from Newsround etc. Be controversial, take risks.

Other great resources to have a look at include UNICEF’s Rights Respecting Schools and Christian Aid’s Global Neighbours, Global Dimension, Think Global, Connecting Classrooms.

For me, Global Citizenship is all about engaging with the world and the belief that each of us can make a difference. RE lessons seem a great platform for this but a whole school approach is needed so get the rest of the staff on board as well. Share your passion about the world in which you live, if you want to make a difference, however great or small, your pupils will too.

Naomi Anstice National Ambassador for Religious Education Networks. @naomianstice

Deeply dippy about the ‘deep dive?’

How are you all ensuring your department is deep dive ready?  This question seems to be on everyone’s lips at the moment so hopefully this is a guide to the deep dive.

So what is a ‘deep dive?’

The purpose of the deep dive is to assess the quality of education. A deep dive ‘involves gathering evidence on the curriculum intent, implementation and impact over a sample of subjects, topics or aspects. This is done in collaboration with leaders, teachers and pupils. The intent of the deep dive is to seek to interrogate and establish a coherent evidence base on quality of education.’(Ofsted: Inspecting the Curriculum’ p4)

Intent

What is your curriculum rationale? 

What is taught and why. Why is the subject of value? 

We spent time in the summer term thinking about why we teach our subject.  A further opportunity to debate the purpose of RE! What do we want from our learners when they leave our school?  Doing this as a team helped all teachers understand the rationale behind what we teach.   It was also important that we thought about our learners in our school context.  As a Humanities faculty we also came up with something that would unite us all in our aims and purpose of our subject.

We then thought about what it is we want from our learners in RS when they leave our school.

To have the time and space to have this dialogue enabled us as a school to really consider the value and importance of what we teach and why.  “If you expect your students to retain what you’re conveying, you must also reveal to them why it matters.” Robert John Meehan

Implementation

So tell me about your curriculum?

What will I see in your lessons?

Many schools have spent time redesigning their KS3 curriculum, thinking very clearly about what fits where and why?  I have seen a number of ways in which subjects have shares their ‘curriculum journey’

See Michael Chiles’ Geography learning journey here…

We have produced simple, single sheet of A4 which mapped out the curriculum for 7, 8.9,10,11 so we can point out where knowledge was built upon across and between years and show links across subjects.  It can also show the increasing challenge of the assessment tasks.

For example year 9

Year 9 Topics Rationale Links
HT1 Science and the

Philosophy of religion

 To address misconceptions that an Empiricist worldview is the only view to take and that Science has all the answers to everything!  This unit gives students an opportunity to engage in classic arguments to the existence of God, which will form a basic understanding for the A level Philosophy element.  It will also develop their ability to construct a logical argument. How do we know what we know? Philosophy, Science, History,

Proud strands (Respect and Achieve)

SMSC

 

The most important thing is to know your curriculum really well and how you have sequenced the content, be able to discuss how you are ensuring students are retaining knowledge and making progress. Ensure all staff know this too!

As a school, we have adopted Rosenshine’s principles to support our learning and teaching.

Deep dive feedback has also shown that inspectors are keen on ensuring that the school’s provision is good enough. Please see NATRE statement on the New Ofsted Framework 

Impact

What will I see in your books?

How would you measure the impact of your curriculum? What is the tangible effect of your curriculum? 

The feedback suggests that there will be no comments made on frequency or quality of marking so the emphasis is on how you will show progress in books.  Teacher feedback and DIRT tasks could evidence where misconceptions have been identified and progress is made.  Read ‘Progress without data – How it can be ‘shown’ & benefit the teacher in the process’

In one case books were not even looked at but the impact the subject had on the well-being and behaviour of the students was questioned.

In short

Curriculum thinking should be a regular professional dialogue between teachers and colleagues in schools. Wherever you are on your journey, these questions could stir your thinking. 

Bear in mind, “If you’re doing something because you think we want to see it and it does not benefit your pupils, then please, do not do it. Continue doing what you’re doing to give children the best, broad-based education possible and inspection will take care of itself. (Ofsted) 

Finally, if you want to read more, NATRE has been monitoring references to RE in both primary and secondary school Ofsted reports under the new framework.

Are you a NATRE member? Click the link, login and download ‘Understanding the new Ofsted framework in the RE classroom’ a document written to support teachers of RE, subject leaders and coordinators in all schools.  Not member? Join today.

Katherine France, Head of Faculty (RS, Citizenship, History, Geography and MFL) The Queen Katherine School, Kendal, NATRE RE Ambassador for the North @KathFrance1975

Developing your subject knowledge

There is an old adage that you are never too old to learn. I am a passionate RE teacher at heart and love acquiring new information about people’s lives. Every week is a new opportunity in my 30-year career to learn more about my specialist subject ‘Religion and Worldviews’. This last week I had the pleasure of running a tour of five places of worship for faith leaders in Newham as it was Interfaith week. I knew that there would be lots of new learning for them, but I did wonder whether there would be any for me!

I shouldn’t have worried as there was. I found out that Buddhist monks and nuns are not allowed a mirror in their bedrooms. Now I have visited and spoken with many Buddhist monks and nuns over many years but didn’t know this fact. It makes sense if you are trying to not be attached to life here, looking in the mirror and concentrating on your outward appearance wouldn’t be helpful. I could see immediately using a covered mirror in a RE lesson, and asking pupils why a Buddhist might not look in a mirror? Great speculation task potentially, with the answer being able to be revealed.

On the tour we also visited St Mary’s Magdalene Church in East Ham which was built by the Cistercian Monks in the 12th century and I got to see original decorations painted on the walls of the church by the monks (simple and beautiful flowers) and again was awed at the fact that there has been a worshipping community on that site for over 900 years. Finally, I got to enjoy Langar at the Gurdwara we visited and a piece of Guru Nanak’s 550th birthday cake – which was along with the rest of the meal very yummy! Each visit built on my subject knowledge and got me to consider what was important to the lives of the people who come into these buildings to meditate or worship daily, and I beg you the experiences will have enhanced my knowledge and therefore my command of what I choose to teach.

It is essential for us as teachers that we continue to add to and develop our subject knowledge in RE – otherwise, I believe that we will short-change the pupils that we teach. Research tells us that when teachers are not confident in their RE subject knowledge they tend to keep to simple activities around retelling, right & wrong questions, and simple comprehension. These activities do not help pupils to really get the flavour of why people chose or choose to live in certain ways – we need to apply facts and information to 21st-century life, and ask pupils to analyse, compare and contrast their learning if RE is to be challenging and effective. Thankfully it seems Ofsted are starting to ask these types of questions in RE deep dives. I think as hard as this will be in the short term, in the long-term having conversations about education and having the expectation that teachers will do what our teaching standards say is positive.

‘Demonstrate good subject and curriculum knowledge, have a secure knowledge of the relevant subject(s) and curriculum areas, foster and maintain pupils’ interest in the subject, and address misunderstandings.’.

But where to start? Here are places I have found helpful:

I am reminded of the words of John F Kennedy “The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.” Adding to our subject knowledge is a lifetime of work, but I hope you will agree with me that a passionate, knowledgeable teacher is always who I want to be taught by.

Written by Claire Clinton, RE advisor to Newham, Barking and Dagenham and NATRE RE ambassador for London @ClaireClinton67