At Denmead Infant School we follow the Agreed Syllabus for religious education (RE) in Hampshire: Living Difference IV.
We offer an educative approach to religious education, emphasising a process of enquiry into concepts.
In RE we learn what it means to live life in the Christian (Abrahamic) and Hindu (Dharmic) traditions and, where required, an overview study of another tradition. Children and young people have the opportunity to respond from their own experience before being introduced to the way others appreciate things. Living Difference IV gives young people the opportunity to evaluate; that is to make a judgement about why something is important for someone else as well as to discern what may be important for themselves. Living Difference IV ‘acknowledges that the question as to what it means to lead one’s life with such an orientation can be answered in a number of qualitatively different ways including religions as truth, religion as practice and religion as existence.’ (Living Difference IV purpose statement).
Our intention is to ‘play an educational part in the lives of children as they come to speak, think and act in the world’, and to develop respectful and responsible individuals who are confident to express their own opinions and ideas as well as being able to show curiosity and acceptance of the beliefs of others. We teach the children to explore, challenge, respect and celebrate. They learn about similarities and differences and learn to respect other people’s faiths and views.
We aim to prepare our children for their future, ever-changing world in which we live.
Religious Education concepts at Denmead Infant School are taught in blocked units of time such as consecutive afternoons. Across all three year groups we use the Living Difference IV which is known as the Agreed RE syllabus; within Year R this contributes to our provision for Understanding the World.
The Living Difference IV approach to enquiry in religious education ‘entails teachers bringing children and young people first to attend to their own experience and that of others, to engage intellectually with material that is new and to discern with others what is valuable with regard to living a religious life or one informed by a non-religious or other perspective.’ The three important moments here are: experiential, intellectual and discernment.
The Living Difference IV approach to enquiry has five key steps. At the Communicate step children are introduced to the concept / word and are invited to share their experiences in different ways, then they become aware of the experience of others at the Apply step. Additional vocabulary will usually be introduced at the Inquire step and traditions will be studied at the Contextualise step before discerning value at the Evaluate step.
Golden thread concepts of community, belonging, special and love thread through the RE curriculum in all key stages providing a spiral curriculum which helps with deepening and broadening children’s experience of religious education over time.
In order to ensure equity and high quality outcomes for children, our approaches to learning are sensitive to the needs of them all, especially those who are vulnerable. We use a range of flexible and responsive teaching strategies, alongside effective assessment to ensure all children receive the support and challenge they need to be successful.
At Denmead Infant School we believe that the provision of a language rich RE curriculum is essential to the successful acquisition of knowledge and it is therefore carefully planned for progressively across the school.
At Denmead Infant School teachers find interesting ways to bring the concepts alive for the children and they employ skilful and effective questioning to check and deepen understanding.
