Our aims for Religious Education (Intent)

At Barlow, we are a Church of England school and we are committed to recognising and valuing every individual as special and unique.

Religious Education at Barlow respects and promotes each child’s spiritual, moral and cultural self. Our Religious Education curriculum leads our children to evaluate and build upon the key questions in spirituality and religion and consider how they may apply to themselves as a citizen in today’s ever changing world. We encourage pupils to develop their own personal beliefs, values ,respect and empathy toward others. Children study the Christian religion, as well as being taught about the rich ideas and traditions from other faith backgrounds. Through Religious Education our children are inspired to respect different beliefs, value their individuality and learn about their unique place within the home, school and parish community.

How RE is taught at Barlow (Impact)

At Barlow we teach RE through a questioning curriculum. Each teacher begins a new topic with ‘The Big Question’ and will then encourage our children to share, evaluate and develop their thoughts within the context of the topic in their own individual way. Our RE curriculum gives full coverage of The 2014 National Curriculum programmes of study for RE and the ‘Understanding of the World’ in the Early Years Foundation Stage. We use the ‘Derbyshire Agreed Syllabus’ and ‘Understanding Christianity’ as the bedrock to our studies in RE.

We teach in a variety of ways to capture the interest and skills of our children.

These may include:

• Open ended discussions
• Questions as a starting point
• Use of resources that the children may handle and examine
• Using creative media to explore their ideas , such as art, drama, sculpture, poetry etc
• Inviting visitors, family members and speakers into school to share insight and ideas with our children
• Visits and trips, including the Derby Faith Trail