RE

R.E

Religious Education is very important in Church of England schools.

RE has a high profile within the curriculum at Bishop Wilson and is an intrinsic part of the delivery of our school’s Christian Vision in enabling all pupils to flourish.  Pupils develop a wide range of skills including enquiry, analysis, interpretation, evaluation and reflection.  RE provides pupils with a safe space to explore their own religious, spiritual and philosophical ways of seeing, living and thinking, believing and belonging.  It allows pupils to gain knowledge and understanding of a range of religions and worldviews appreciating diversity, continuity and change through the study of different world faiths i.e. Judaism, Islam, and Hinduism.  It is important that pupils view Christianity as a diverse, global living faith through exploration of core beliefs which critically engage with biblical text.  RE units are concept driven.  

RE follows a 2year year rolling programme which incorporates units from Questful RE (Recommended for RE by the Chester Diocese); elements of Understanding Christianity units (see links for both below) and some suplitmentary materials.  Each unit/concept begins with a 'Big Question' and knowledge harvest.  These are addressed again at the end of the topic to show progression in knowledge and understanding of the unit.  

More details are available at questful-re.org.uk and understandingchristianity.org.uk

Through R.E. we interweave our curriculum drivers in as many ways as possible.

For example:

Reading - we encourage children to read and analyse biblical texts and to read new vocabulary relating to different world religions e.g. Mosque, Qur’an, Tallit, Gurdwara. 

Believers – RE teaching helps children to understand the place of religious faith in modern life and the importance of developing their own beliefs.  It is about creating an awareness within the child of the relevance of faith in their own lives and in the lives of others.

Communicators – RE lessons provide a ‘safe’ space for children to be able to communicate their own feelings and beliefs.   They are given opportunities to engage with challenging questions of meaning and purpose raised by human existence and experience.

Explorers – In RE children will explore their own religious, spiritual and philosophical ways of seeing, living and thinking, believing and belonging.  We will consistently provide children with a range of opportunities to inquire, question, develop their own response and formulate their own views to fundamental issues as they encounter and respond to religion.  They will explore world faiths through e.g. handing of artefacts, visiting places of worship, meeting visitors from faith backgrounds.