At Uplands Infant School the Religious Education Curriculum has been developed using Leicester City Agreed Syllabus and the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework.
Our RE curriculum has been designed to build on our children’s cultural capital through an enquiry based model which develops our children’s critical thinking, motivation to learn and understanding of their own beliefs, as well as those of different religions and cultures. Our curriculum drivers underpin our RE curriculum and we aim to foster an awareness of the British Values, of respect and tolerance of others and knowledge of our own society. Our philosophy is to encourage children to value their own self-worth, empathise with others, respect everyone and make a positive contribution to our community.
Our key RE concepts: understand beliefs and teachings, understand practices and lifestyles, understand how beliefs are conveyed, reflect and to understand values. These are organised so that children are able to return to the same concepts over and over so they gradually build a secure understanding and appreciation of the key beliefs of Hindus and Christians.
Our RE milestones define the standards for the threshold concepts. In the Early Years, children are introduced to these concepts by starting from their own experiences and developing these to embed their understanding of different religions. Throughout year 1 we expect children to build upon this foundation developing their understanding of the concepts and in year 2 they will be advancing towards a deep understanding of the milestone.
Our teaching of RE is taught as a discrete subject on a weekly basis in Reception and in KS1 bi weekly. All children have the opportunity to explore and embed their learning through Continuous Provision. The RE Curriculum is implemented in the following ways:
- Children learn to understand, evaluate and interpret key beliefs and ideas through listening and responding to religious stories in sacred texts
- Children learn to compare religious ideas and concepts, through discussion and debate, articulating their own beliefs, ideas, values and experiences and demonstrating respect for differences in the beliefs of other religions.
- Children learn to make links and be curious about different religions. They have opportunities to handle artefacts and respond to images and stories through art, music and dance.
- Children have opportunities to share their feelings and ideas and to appreciate the importance of maintaining positive relationships with others regardless of religion
- Children have opportunities to explore and embed their learning during Continuous Provision. They are given opportunities to strengthen their understanding of the religions of the world through activities which allow them to be creative and imaginative together.
- Children have opportunities to talk to visitors from different faiths and to make visits to places of worship in the local environment.
- Children take part in and attend year group assemblies where they explore how different religions celebrate important events.
- Children have opportunities to reflect quietly together.
The impact of our curriculum is that by the end of each milestone, the vast majority of children have sustained mastery of the content, that is, they remember it all and are fluent in it; some children have a greater depth of understanding. Our assessment ensures that teachers and children assess their learning continuously throughout the lesson.
This means that by the end of Early Years, most children will be able to know some of the similarities and differences between different religions in this country, drawing on their experiences and what has been discussed in class.
Our RE milestones expect Year 1 to have a secure knowledge of our key RE concepts which develops into a deeper understanding of how to think for themselves, ask significant questions, evaluate ideas and work constructively with others by the end of Year 2.
Opportunities for the future
We ensure our children are made aware of how the skills they obtain through Religious Education (such as, compassion, empathetic, reflection, questioning, critical thinking) can assist them in a range of occupations including charity worker, advice worker, mediator, solicitor, youth worker, archivist, equality, diversity and inclusion officer, editorial assistant, researcher and teacher.
Possibilities:
Children will learn about the experiences of people of faith through visits from religious leaders and through sharing experiences of staff and families within the school.
Environment:
As part of learning in and from our environment we will focus on visits to places of worship and where community celebrations take place. We will reflect on how having a religious perspective helps us to consider what we need to do to look after our world and show respect and compassion for others.
Diversity:
Through teaching RE we start with children’s experiences of belief and faith and expose them to other religions. We do this by encouraging visits to various celebrations across the city.
Whole school overview
Reception - In Class Learning - 2023-2024
Reception children have been learning about the important festival Christmas. They have learnt it is a special time for Christians who celebrate the birthday of Baby Jesus. The children showed respect and excitement when listening to the Christmas story and decorating their classrooms with Christmas decorations.
The children enjoyed listening to stories about Holi and loved having their own joyful celebration of colour.
Year 1 - In Class Learning - 2023-2024
In RE this term, Year One have been learning about Sacred Texts. They found out about the Bible, The Gita and The Vedas thinking about what they mean to and how they are used by believers. As a class they also discussed and researched how these important books should be handled, stored and cared for.
The children used the bibles to explore, read and find out about different religious stories. In these photos you will see the children talking together about what they notice and sharing ideas about what they found out. The children enjoyed finding the same story in different versions of the Bible and comparing the content and illustrations.
After recalling the names of some of the important Hindu Gods and finding out more about the history and importance of the Sacred Books of Hindus, the children listened, responded to, and learned the story of ‘Ganesh’s race around the world’. The photographs show the children collaborating in groups to sequence the events of the story in order. After checking that the order was correct by re-reading the story, together we began to think about what this story might mean for Hindus.
In Class Learning - 2022-2023
Autumn 1 Special People
In Early Years we have been talking about who is special to us and why. We then discussed who Jesus is and why he is special to Christians. We discussed that Christians believe Jesus is the Son of God sent to help everyone.
Christmas
Children in Early Years have been learning about why Christmas is a special time for Christians. They have listened to the Story of Jesus’s birth – The Nativity. They enjoyed performing their own Christmas story and celebrating by having a Christmas party.
Holi
Children in Early Years were very excited to make and taste pancakes. We talked about how Pancake Day is called Shrove Tuesday by Christians. Shrove Tuesday is the start of a 40 day fasting period called Lent. Along time ago Christians would use up all their eggs making pancakes before they fasted.
Easter
Belonging
In RE this term, the children have been learning about where they belong and what it means to them to belong to different places. The children talked about what their religion means to them and found out that different people belong to different religions. They are looking forward to talking to lots more people about their faith so they can learn the similarities and differences in how people show faithfulness to their God or Gods.They found out that lots of words that help them to feel good about where they belong are the same, whether talking about belonging to family, school, class, mosque, temple or church. Showing love, trust and respect are important parts of belonging in all these places. The children observed that we have so much in common, which makes being together and celebrating our unique role in belonging to different places so wonderful!
Religious Cards
After Christmas we spent some time looking at a collection of cards. We noticed the themes of the cards and sorted them out. We used our knowledge of the Christmas story which we learned before Christmas to identify the religious cards and we found other traditional themes such as winter, churches, choirs, robins, presents and snowmen. We used the cards to talk about some of the ways that Christians celebrate Christmas and we can name the characters and sequence key events of the story. We had a go at doing this independently in provision and recorded our work on SeeSaw.’
Values
In Class Learning 2021-2022
Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Day)
Today the Nursery Children have been learning to make pancakes and how Christian people celebrate Pancake Day. They spoke about their own experiences of eating pancakes. We have learnt that some of us like the same toppings and some of us like different ones.
Exploring Hinduism
The Reception children enjoyed an assembly and then had sessions exploring symbols of Hinduism such as divas and musical instruments. They especially enjoyed learning about the fireworks and food that form part of the Diwali celebrations. The children were eager to share which Indian sweets they enjoyed.
Celebrating Holi
Children in Reception have been learning about why Easter is a special time for Christians and how it is celebrated. They have enjoyed trying special food, hot cross buns, and looking at Christian symbols of Easter. The teachers were very impressed with the respect the children showed when handling the representation of The Last Supper and the crucifix.
Celebrating Eid
Exploring Hinduism
On Wednesday 26th January we had a lovely lady called Sunita come and visit us to tell us all about Hinduism.
Children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 were treated to an assembly and then individual class session where they learnt all about Hinduism.
Baptism
Easter
Children in Year One ended the Spring Term with an Easter egg hunt and answered the retrieval question hidden inside each egg based on what we have been learning in RE about the Hindu and Christian Festivals of Diwali, Christmas, Holi and Easter.
They had loads of fun and if they were unsure of an answer they collaborated with each other and used the resources provided to retrieve the correct answer and embed their learning. They have learned to compare these religions and how Hindus and Christians celebrate significant festivals, drawing on the similarities and differences and articulating this with others. We heard some great discussions going on! Well Done Year One!
Exploring Hinduism
The Story of Christmas link to the story and lots of fun Christmas activities
Easter
Examples of stories with a religious theme from a range of religions
- The boy who cried wolf – Aesop’s fable
- The crocodile and the Priest – a Sikh story
- Bilal and the beautiful butterfly story – a Muslim story
General websites
Leicester Cathedral
St Martins House
7 Peacock Lane
Leicester
LE1 5PZ
https://leicestercathedral.org
Take a walk in your local area and see what religious building you can see!
- Let’s Celebrate! by Kate DePalma
- Nativity flap bookk by Sam Taplin
- Welcome to our World by Moira Butterfield
- Easter story by Heather Amery
- Amazing Muslims who changed the world by Burhana Islam
- 1001 inventions & awesome facts from Muslim civilization by National Geographic
- The Usborne Children’s Bible by Heather Amery