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What does Religious Education look like at Rosa Street?

At Rosa Street, we provide a curriculum where children will develop an understanding of the beliefs, practices and teachings of different worldwide religions and non-religious world views. The curriculum follows the Durham Locally Agreed Syllabus (2020 edition), outlining what should be taught.  We aim to consider the uniqueness and individual needs of our pupils by delivering a broad, balanced differentiated and relevant Religious Education curriculum to prepare our children to live within a multicultural society. 

Within the curriculum, we look in detail at the religious and non-religious groups in our local community and the significant places of worship and Saints of North East England.  Each year group progresses in knowledge and skills using golden threads of knowledge and understanding, critical thinking and personal reflection. The knowledge and understanding is divided into four concepts: beliefs, impact on beliefs, authority and expression of beliefs.

It is important for us that children will aspire to show appreciation of how religions can positively impact on society. Children will learn respect and tolerance for the beliefs and practices of others; which is a main factor of our school’s work on the protected characteristics.  Children will gain first-hand experiences by visiting places of religious significance and welcoming visitors into school. As a school we recognise the local area is not as culturally diverse as larger cities in the UK.  Our curriculum will enable our children to develop local, national and global awareness now and in the future as adult travellers. 

As well as finding out about different groups, the children are given time to ask questions and reflect on their own ideas based on what they have learnt.  Within class, lessons follow an enquiry-based learning approach with lessons having a lesson question to consider.  Lessons are differentiated so that all learners can take part at their individual level. Pupils are given time to reflect and discuss their own beliefs and are taught that every child has a right to their own religious beliefs in our Rights Respecting Schools work.  Each unit of work has a knowledge organiser to ensure key vocabulary and concepts are known.

There are many ways in which we evidence our religious education work.   Written work will be showcased in books, and photographs and spoken evidence will be put into class floor books. Videos and photographs will also be captured and saved as evidence of practical lessons, trips and spoken evidence. We have oracy links across our curriculum. We feel that spoken evidence is as important as written, as it gives equal opportunities, for children of all abilities, to demonstrate their understanding of religious beliefs.  As we have started each sequence of learning with an enquiry question, the lessons will be spent investigating and finding information that will help to form the answer. The endpoints for each sequence of learning are clear; children will be expected to demonstrate their understanding, by answering the enquiry question. This could be in a range of forms, depending upon the task and the year group, which has been designed to be progressive across school.