Intent

At Priory Park Infant School we have a carefully thought out RE curriculum and progression of skills that takes into account children’s experiences and prior learning to introduce the beliefs, practices and stories of Christianity and Islam and to enable them to reflect upon their own beliefs, values and experiences and to respect others. Our children often come to school with no or little experience of any religions so we believe it is important for our young children to have opportunities to learn through repetition and a careful introduction of new knowledge, skills and vocabulary. The curriculum intends to provide a high quality, creative and progressive experience of RE with opportunities for cross curricular links. We encourage our children to ask questions about the world around them and to have time to explore these new concepts.  

We enhance our curriculum with trips, visitors and by the use of music, art and play to make it a hands on experience. 

Implementation 

We use the agreed Cambridgeshire Religious Education syllabus as a basis for our curriculum. In KS1 the curriculum is 50% Christianity and 50% another religion and at Priory Park Infant school we have chosen to teach Islam as it is reflective of the next largest religion in Huntingdonshire after Christianity.  

Our curriculum is carefully planned with clear progression in both religions across our three years. In each year group we learn what the children already know so that we are able to tailor lessons so that the learning is appropriate to their needs and covers the correct knowledge and vocabulary needed for each year. We build upon the previous years learning by carefully thinking about what the children need to know next. 

We believe that RE is best taught through stories, videos, artefacts, discussion and real life experiences- be it visiting local places of worship or talking to people in the local community who have experiences in either religions. We focus on how Christian and Muslim families celebrate significant events in their religious calendars as well as finding out about the important things to them. We look for similarities between the religions and spend lots of time reflecting on how it feels to be a Christian or Muslim in countries around the world.

Assemblies often take place to reinforce the learning that goes on classes and celebrates Islam and Christian religious events throughout the year. Classes often share their learning in assemblies, so that RE is linked across the school.

Our RE learning journey and RE display area showcases the learning that happens throughout the year and is a great tool for children to be able to see RE in action in each year group. Our children will often look back at what they learnt earlier in the year and reflect on their new learning in a religion and spot relevant artefacts and stories familiar to them.

Impact

We know that our children make progress because they know more and remember more. This then enables them to talk more and show a greater understanding of why religion is important to people and communities. 

Our children demonstrate positive attitudes towards people of any religion and show respect to others with different beliefs to their own.

We regularly assess what our children know by 

- having whole class discussions

- talking to small groups

- getting children to draw/ label the things they know

- looking at floor books which record childrens ideas during brainstorming sessions.

We also ask our children what would help them to learn more respond to these suggestions within our planning.