Religious Education

Religious Education

INTENT

All members of our school community are on a faith journey together. Guided by our Mission Statement, we seek to:-

Know - strive to learn more about God, the world he created for us and our role in caring for it.

Love - learn to grow in love for Jesus and for one another.

Serve - work to notice the needs of those around us - both in our school and in our wider community and work together to serve and be the face of Jesus for each other.

IMPLEMENTATION

We recognise that we are all at different stages of this journey and as a community we support each person as they continue their journey, deepening their relationship with, and knowledge of Christ.

Prayer and worship are central to school life and children are encouraged to pray individually and as part of our community. There are many opportunities for worship within the school and as part of our parish. All are welcome to join us as we celebrate the Word of God through liturgies, assemblies and Mass.

R.E.

To fulfil our aims and objectives, St. Richard's will follow the Come and See programme of Religious Education, recommended by the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton as our scheme of work. The programme follows a themed approach based around three themes, Church, Sacraments and Christian Living. These are explored in greater depth each term and build on the understanding of the previous term. The themes are explored through different topics in each year group. They follow the liturgical year and explore the richness of the teachings of the Catholic faith and Christian knowledge.

Come and See is an invitation to exploration and promise of life for everyone. Come and See offers the opportunity to search, to explore, to discover, and to repond; this is part of what it is to be human.

Come and See aims to raise questions and provide materials for children to reflect on their own experience. For all children the programme will raise questions of meaning and purpose and enable children to think critically, providing materials for reflecting on their own experience.

It will help them to explore the beliefs and values and the way of life of the Catholic traditions, and of other faith traditions, developing good attitudes and dispositions so that children are instilled with a 'love of learning' and a desire to go on learning.

Children will be offered a sense of self-worth through experience of belonging to the caring community of St. Richard's.

For further information on what your child will be studying in R.E. this term, please see the "Come and See" letter for parents at the end of this page.

Come and See Curriculum

What is taught in each theme across the year groups:

R.H.S.E

We are delighted to announce that our school is participating in a brand new Relationship Education programme for Catholic primary schools, titled Life to the Full. You may hear your child coming home talking about this and we want to give you a brief overview of this new and ambitious programme.

As you may be aware, Relationship Education becomes statutory for all primary schools from Summer Term 2021. The Life to the Full programme is based on ‘A Model Catholic RSE Curriculum’ by the Catholic Education Service which was highlighted as a work of good practice by the Department of Education. Therefore, we have confidence that the programme will be fit for purpose in supporting the growth and development of your child.

Life to the Full is much more than a series of lessons. It is an entire platform of creative resources that will engage, inform and inspire our children and, indeed, you as parents. This includes interactive video content, story-based activities, employing a wide range of teaching tools, original worship music and an accompanying programme of classroom prayers.

In addition there will be an online parent platform so that you, as parent and carers, can engage with the teaching and deepen the experience for your child. To access the online parent platform please visit: www.tentenresources.co.uk/parent-portal

Life to the Full is intended to be partnership between home, school and church. We know that you already do a fantastic job and we see our new programme, Life to the Full, as a means to further develop, support and enrich the partnership between home, school and church so that your child is fully supported.

We have spent a lot of time researching and training our staff in the use of these resources and we are really looking forward to helping your child to better know themselves as a child of God, living in His world and developing successful and loving relationships with others in His name.

The programme adopts a spiral curriculum approach so that as your child goes through the programme year-after-year, the learning will develop and grow, with each stage building on the last.

Module One: Created and Loved by God

Module One: Created and Loved by God explores the individual. Rooted in the teaching that we are made in the image and likeness of God, it helps children to develop an understanding of the importance of valuing themselves as the basis for personal relationships.

In these sessions, we explore:

Key Stage One – that we are uniquely made by a loving God, that we have differences and similarities (including physical differences between boys and girls), key information about staying physically healthy, understanding feelings and emotions, including strong feelings such as anger, and the cycle of life from birth to old age.

Lower Key Stage Two – understanding differences, respecting our bodies, puberty and changing bodies, strategies to support emotional wellbeing including practicing thankfulness, and the development of pupils understanding of life before birth.

Upper Key Stage Two – appreciation of physical and emotional differences, a more complex understanding of physical changes in girl and boys bodies, body image, strong emotional feelings, the impact of the internet and social media on emotional well-being, a more nuanced and scientific understanding of life in the womb and menstruation.

Module Two: Created to Love Others

Module Two: Created to Love Others explores the individual’s relationship with others. Building on the understanding that we have been created out of love and for love, this unit explores how we take this calling into our family, friendships and relationships, and teaches strategies for developing heatlhy relationships and keeping safe.

This religious understanding is then applied to real-world situations relevant to the age and stage of the children:

Key Stage One – In the Unit ‘Personal Relationships’, children are taught to identify the Special People in their lives who they love and can trust, how to cope with various social situations and dilemmas, and the importance of saying sorry and forgiveness within relationships. In the Unit ‘Keeping Safe’, we explore the risks of being online by incorporating the ‘Smartie the Penguin’ resources from Childnet, the difference between good and bad secrets, and teaching on physical boundaries (incorporating the PANTS resource the NSPCC).

Lower Key Stage Two – The sessions here help children to develop a more complex appreciation of different family structures and there are activities and strategies to help them develop healthy relationships with family and friends; here, they are also taught simplified Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) techniques for managing thoughts, feelings and actions.

Once again, for the ‘Keeping Safe’ unit, there are some excellent NSPCC resources, as well as teaching on bullying and abuse through a series of animated stories.

Upper Key Stage Two – The sessions for UKS2 in the ‘Personal Relationships’ module aim to equip children with strategies for more complex experiences of relationships and conflict; this includes sessions that help children to identify and understand how to respond to spoken and unspoken pressure, the concept of consent and some practical demonstrations of this, and further teaching on how our thoughts and feelings have an impact on how we act.

Module Three: Created to Live in Community

Finally, Module Three: Created to Live in Community explores the individual’s relationship with the wider world. Here we explore how human beings are relational by nature and are called to love others in the wider community through service, through dialogue and through working for the Common Good.

In the first Unit, Religious Understanding, the story sessions help children to develop a concept of the Trinity.

In subsequent sessions, we apply this religious understanding to real-world situations, such as the community we live in, and through exploring the work of charities which work for the Common Good.

Each Module is then broken down into Units of Work.

Module 1	Created and Loved by God
Units	Religious Understanding Me, My Body, My Health Emotional Well-Being Life Cycles
Module 2	Created to Love Others
Units	Religious Understanding Personal Relationship Keeping Safe
Module 3	Created to Live in Community
Units	Religious Understanding Living in the Wider World

IMPACT

We strive to ensure that children leave St. Richard's Catholic Primary School, prepared, not only in the knowledge of their faith, but as young citizens of the world - ready to serve and bring Christ to others. We aim for our pupils to be clearly recognisable as pupils of St. Richard's Catholic Primary school, not only because of the deep knowledge and love they have of their faith but also because of their understanding of how to live it - serving those around them with dignity and humility and a genuine, active care for the world in which they live.

Mini Vinnies

Our Prayer Ambassadors are beginning their training to become Mini-Vinnies in order to learn to serve their community better. Find out more using the link below..

https://www.svp.org.uk/mini-vinnies