Our Religion and Worldviews Curriculum
Intent
Children attending Kaizen Primary School often have very few experiences of life outside of their local area due to being located in an area of high deprivation, meaning that families are not able to visit and engage with different cultures outside of the local area and high mobility rates (23% for 2021-22, nearly ¼ of our whole school cohort were new last year).
“In Religious Education (RE), pupils enter into a rich discourse about the religious and non-religious traditions that have shaped Great Britain and the world. RE in primary schools enables pupils to take their place within a diverse multi-religious and multi-secular society. At its best, it is intellectually challenging and personally enriching. It affords pupils both the opportunity to see the religion and non-religion in the world, and the opportunity to make sense of their own place in that world.” [1]
At Kaizen, we follow the Newham Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education in accordance with Newham’s Standing Advisory Council of Religious Education’ (SACRE). We ensure to be inclusive of not only the study of religious and non-religious teachings and beliefs, but its relationship with the children’s developing personal worldview. This develops the children’s open-mindedness and understanding of other cultures and religions in line with British Values. We aim to show the significance of learning Religion and Worldviews through showing different career opportunities available as part of our ‘Future Me’ initiative, e.g. linking religious beliefs from sports to politics, as well as humanitarian.
The religions and worldviews curriculum encourages for children to use this subject to further develop their worldviews alongside their critical thinking through the exploration of the main world’s six religions teachings and beliefs; the use of thought-provoking questions is answered throughout the units - supported by the main six religious views, allowing healthy debates on the unit’s question - providing clarity on how religion and worldviews relates to the children’s own morals and values. The subject encourages children to develop their own thought provoking challenging questions about the meaning and purpose in life, beliefs about God, ultimate reality, issues of right and wrong and what it means to be human. This is explored in a supportive environment through P4C (class discussions) where the children’s contribution is explored through conversation and related back to the unit’s overall question. Children learn through this style of teaching how to value and listen to other’s differing opinions respectfully and express their insights clearer too.
Our curriculum ensures that by the end of Year 6 they will have:
● Explored the six main world religions and secular views and how it’s applied to individual lives. This includes the special books of each religion, god, festivals, place of worship, special places e.g. pilgrimages, special people and symbols
● Expressed and communicated ideas about the different religions and worldviews by responding to their year’s big question (What is special to me and others?)
● Explored different philosophical themes each year (belonging and my identity and others)
● Investigated the relationship between secular and religious worldviews as well as the relationship between beliefs and actions (EYFS explore the concept of a good friend, KS1 explore peace and how to improve the world, KS2 investigate peace within the world, how different religions deal with death and the impact of inner forces on their everyday actions)
● Investigated the relationship between religion and our neighbourhood (e.g. EYFS visit a church, KS1 explore what is in a church and their special book, KS2 explore different types of churches and how it serves their community)
[1]Research Review Series: Religious Education 2021 paragraph 1
● Investigated the relation between religion and belonging
● Investigated the relationship between religious stories and action
● Investigated the relationship between religions and symbols
● Gained an understanding of, show appreciation for and celebrate the co-existence, acceptance and tolerance of all faiths at our schools as well as our local, national and global communities. It also ensures that the children
● Understood each other’s beliefs, practises and ways of life
● Have an opportunity to visit the local area’s places of worship and Vocabulary development is a key aspect of our whole school curriculum as a result of the high proportion of children who start Kaizen Primary School with lower levels of vocabulary than is typical for their age.
Vocabulary is explicitly taught alongside the key concepts, in each unit. In EYFS, children are taught vocabulary of story and celebration. Then in KS1, they are taught vocabulary using special items such as Holy Books and specific names, e.g. Christianity a Islam, Guru and Priest. In LKS2, vocabulary is taught through parables and teachings with specific items relating to the religions, e.g. Yad is used to touch the Torah in Judaism. When th get to UKS2, vocabulary is expanded to examples of religion in modern people’s life to help them define and explain concepts. E.g. The concept of peace is deepened in Year 5 with examples of how each religion refers to it.
The RW curriculum starts when the children begin their learning journey in the Early Years. Therefore we allow children to explore religious themes and content through the ‘Understanding of the World’ strand of the EYFS curriculum. Children in EYFS celebrate various religious celebrations throughout the year and are introduced to stories that have a moral.
Implementation
High quality learning experiences in RW are designed and provided by careful planning of the Curriculum, taking into account the need to offer breadth of content, depth of learning and coherence between concepts, skills and content.
To ensure full curriculum coverage we have put in place the following measures:
- A unit of Religions and Worldviews is taught once each term
- The curriculum explores religion and world views through the lens of the six main world religions: Christianity; Judaism: Hinduism; Islam: Sikhi; Buddhism, alongside secular faiths such as Humanism.
- Each of our termly themes is focussed in on enquiry questions; thus allowing children to both learn about religion and reflect on what they are learning from religion; and apply lessons from all faiths to their lives
- Religious festivals are celebrated throughout the school through collective worship such as Christmas, Eid, Easter, Guru Nanak's Birthday etc. to ensure everyone informed regardless of the unit covered at the time
RW subject matter gives particular opportunities to promote an ethos of respect for others, challenge stereotypes and build understanding of other cultures and beliefs. This contributes to promoting a positive and inclusive school ethos that champions democratic values and human rights.
In short, RW is an essential aspect of our work to promote community cohesion and preparing pupils for life in Modern Britain. For the purposes of the return to school post lockdown, we have endeavoured to be as inclusive as possible by aiming to offer a baseline of understanding for as many of our community’s cultures and beliefs as possible for each year group.
At Kaizen, we believe that all learners should primarily access the first quality teaching and be immersed in class discussions during geography lessons. Therefore, SEND learners access the same learning as all other children but will be given further support, adapted outcomes and a tailored approach to suit each individual’s needs. Strategies used to support our SEND learners include:
- A pre-teach of topic specific vocabulary
- Reading support when researching using a range of sources
- Printouts of work/presentations to scaffold with independent tasks
- Instructions broken down into manageable chunks and more time given to process the information
Children with high levels of need have a broad curriculum offer, linking into National Curriculum themes, but with scaffolded learning which meets their needs, ensuring they are also making good progress from their initial starting points. The themes are planned to ensure that geography skills and knowledge to be embedded and built upon.
We understand that children have missed opportunities of learning because of the COVID outbreak and the resulting distance and blended learning models that were used in the previous school years. Our current teaching model ensures that any missed opportunities are addressed before teaching new concepts and topics. This pre-teaching approach ensures that children are able to access the new learning and build upon their knowledge and skills of each religion or worldviews.
Progress
● We have ensured knowledge progression by using Newham SACRE resources to help build our progression map and ensure pitch and progression is appropriate for each year group.
● We have mapped the knowledge for each unit across a year group and through the key stages to ensure progression knowledge is covered.
● We have also mapped skills across the key stages to ensure our units allow children to develop skills and acquire new skills relevant to their learning in RW.
● From Year 1 onwards, at the beginning and end of each unit, the children complete a PrePost document to clearly show their progress throughout each unit
Impact
RW helps build resilience to anti-democratic or extremist narratives. It enables pupils to build their sense of identity and belonging, which helps them flourish within their communities a as citizens in a diverse society due to their Spiritual, Moral, Social and Culture (SMSC) development - which is also developed in RSHE - to make them overall a better version of themselves. RW teaches pupils to develop respect for others, including people with different faiths and beliefs, and helps to challenge prejudice. It prompts pupils to consider their responsibilities to themselves and to others, and to explore how they might contribute to their communities and to wider society.
The impact of our Religions and Worldviews curriculum at Kaizen ensures that children are equipped with understanding of careful listening and a willingness to accept the diversity of worldviews they will encounter in KS3 as well as in life. Children will be clear about the careers available to them as part of our ‘Future Me’ aspect of the curriculum and continue to explore opportunities available to them.
RE & Worldviews Knowledge Progression