At St Thomas’ CE Primary School, Religious Education is a core subject which promotes:

1. A knowledge of Christianity; its stories, traditions, festivals, worship and teachings
2. An awareness of life’s spiritual dimension
3. A sense of Christian morality; explored through our Christian values of respect, perseverance, friendship and forgiveness.
4. A knowledge of and respect for the other world faiths.

Through the above, we aim to help children to:

• develop an awareness of spiritual and moral issues in their own and other's life experiences.
• develop knowledge, understanding and respect for the range of religions and cultural differences found locally, nationally and internationally.
• develop an understanding of what it means to be committed to a religious tradition.
• develop investigative and research skills to enable them to make reasoned judgements about religious issues.

Teaching and learning style:

We believe that good teaching in RE should allow children to extend their own sense of values and develop their spiritual growth through their discussion, reflection upon, questioning and responses to a variety of religious ideas and concepts. Children study particular religious themes and compare the views of different faith groups. Discussion is guided by the principles of Philosophy for Children (P4C), creating a safe, collaborative learning community, within which the children take ownership of their learning, in pairs, groups or as a whole class, to share and discuss ideas. This approach develops a much deeper understanding of RE – getting beyond simply learning facts to handling ideas and questions more effectively.

Through a variety of teaching methods, we aim to differentiate the RE curriculum and promote inclusion in a variety of ways including:

• setting  of open-ended tasks;
• setting tasks of increasing difficulty;
• providing resources to support or challenge as appropriate
• Using adult or peer support
• Talk frames and word mats to aide discussions and writing
• Drama and retelling of stories
• Using stimuli to develop questioning and discussion.