Religious Education - The Whiteoak Way

“Your beliefs become your thoughts, your thoughts become your words, your words become your actions, your actions become your habits, your habits become your values and your values become your destiny.” Mahatma Ghandi

Our Aims for Religious Education

At Whiteoak Academies we believe that Religious Education (RE) allows children to reflect on their own personal beliefs and values through knowledge and understanding of principal religions and religious traditions. We provide an environment where children engage in discussion about the world around them and how they can use their knowledge and understanding of world religions to make a positive impact on today’s society and life beyond school. We deliver RE in line with the North Somerset Agreed Syllabus ‘Awareness, Mystery and Value 2022’ and use the Discovery RE programme as our scheme of work.

We believe that our R.E. curriculum has an important role in preparing pupils for adult life, employment and lifelong learning. It encourages pupils to develop their sense of identity, belonging, respect for and sensitivity to others, in particular those whose faiths and beliefs are different from their own. It promotes discernment and enables pupils to combat prejudice, become rational and insightful. It enables them to flourish individually within their communities as citizens in a diverse society and global community.
 

British Values and SMSC in Religious Education.

To help ensure that children leave school prepared for life in modern Britain, the DfE issued guidance to all schools on improving the spiritual, moral, social and cultural (SMSC) development of children through the promotion of fundamental British values.

Across our family of schools, we aim to develop a climate where the British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, mutual respect and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs are deeply embedded at every level and lived through our vivid vision, core values and curriculum.

Discovery RE

Discovery 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. The key question for the enquiry 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.

The programme of study follows a four-step enquiry method. 

Step 1 - engagement

  Step 2 - investigation 

 Step 3 - evaluation 

 Step 4 - expression 

 

RE OVERVIEW

Here is our overview of teaching from Reception to Year 6.

 

Together we can do great things.’ 

^{Mother Teresa}