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DistingtonCommunity School

Empower, Learn, Celebrate

RE at DCS

At Distington Community School, we follow the new Cumbrian Agreed Syllabus for RE 2023. This syllabus reflects developments in RE towards an education in religion and worldviews, offering challenge and depth for all pupils. It embodies an approach that values lived experience and diversity within and between religious and belief traditions.

This syllabus provides a curriculum with religious literacy at its heart and encourages children and young people to engage critically with the big questions in life. It prepares them both for life within the counties of Cumberland and Westmorland & Furness, and also in the wider world, when they encounter a range of ideas and beliefs.

 

What are the aims of this syllabus?

• To know about and understand a range of religious and non-religious worldviews by learning to see these through theological, philosophical and human science lenses.

 • To express ideas and insights about the nature, significance and impact of religious and non-religious worldviews through a disciplinary approach.

• To gain and deploy skills rooted in theology, philosophy and the human sciences engaging critically with religious and non-religious worldviews.

 • To be able to reflect on personal worldviews Pupils’ progress should be assessed in relation to this purpose and these aims of RE.

 

Pupils are encouraged to explore how religious and non-religious worldviews relate to each other, recognising diversity within and between personal and organised worldviews. This will enable pupils to reflect on the significance of interfaith dialogue and the important contribution this can make to combatting prejudice and discrimination, including racist and/or religious hate crime such as Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. As Teachers, we will be positive role models for inclusivity and acceptance encouraging pupils to be respectful and accepting towards people with different religious or non-religious worldviews to their own.

Jigsaw RE

 

Jigsaw RE is an enquiry-based approach to Religion and Worldviews Education, a different enquiry for every half-term (6 per year) focusing on one religion at a time. The aim is to deepen children’s critical thinking skills through greater subject knowledge and also to allow their own spiritual development. Each enquiry has a big enquiry question e.g. What is the best way for a Sikh to show commitment to God? and this is explored with a 4-step process: Engagement (How can I make connections between my world and the world of religion?) Investigation (What do I need to learn about the religion in order to answer the big question) Evaluation (How well can I apply this knowledge to the big question using critical thinking/evaluation skills?) Expression (Can I express what difference this enquiry has made to me, my thinking and my starting point?)

Jigsaw RE Charter

 

Establishing a respectful, safe and positive learning environment based on open and trusting relationships between all members of the class, adults and children alike, is vital to high quality, discursive RE. The enquiry approach allows for different views to be shared and there to be “no one right answer” to many of the questions asked.

Mapping Jigsaw RE to the Cumbria Agreed Syllabus

Progression of skills in RE

In RE, we follow a layered learning approach whereby skills objectives are covered multiple times throughout the year and revisited in the following year group. This layering and consolidating engenders depth and supports children to develop a sense of concrete understanding of all of the different skills in each enquiry.

 

Skills Objectives are covered more than once and children have opportunities to apply these several times over the course of a year, as well as consolidate prior knowledge from previous years.

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