RE at St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School

‘We belong to the family of St. Joseph’s school. We love, live, learn and celebrate together; Building God’s kingdom with Jesus our Lord.’

Our mission is the foundations of everything we do at St. Joseph’s, in every lesson and activity, not just in RE. We build religious literacy through developing knowledge and understanding about religious and non-religious worldviews and developing critical thinking through the skills of analysis and evaluation in relation to questions raised by their learning in RE.

The school has pupils and families from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds. For the Year of 20122-23 we have our own spiritual ‘Year of theme’ based on our mission statement.
‘A Global Family: Building God’s Kingdom’

Intent

Our aims are to:

  • increase knowledge and understanding of the religious view of Catholicism
  • increase knowledge and understanding on specific religious and non-religious worldviews, knowledge becomes deeper, more complex and more comprehensive.
  • increase knowledge and understanding of how religion can be defined and understood in a coherent way, how concepts can connect to form a framework of understanding religion, what is meant by the term ‘worldview’.
  • increase knowledge and understanding of religious diversity and similarities and differences within and across religious and non-religious traditions.
  • extend use of specialist vocabulary in a way that becomes increasingly technical, unfamiliar theological conceptual and abstract.
  • Extend knowledge and understanding of the significance and influence of religious and non-religious worldviews on individuals, communities and societies.
  • Increase the ability to ask sophisticated questions, analysis and evaluate a range of ideas, practices and opinions in relation to material studied.

RE also gives opportunities for pupils to reflect on their own experiences, feelings, beliefs, values and ideas in response to the material covered. This opportunity for personal reflection can be developed and deepened throughout the key stages but is not part of assessment or benchmark expectations.

Teaching

RE is taught as 10% of our timetable and delivered through the Come and See programme via the Diocesan Curriculum Directory. Topics are taught generally over a four-week programme of study, with RE objectives fully embedded within each area. We use a variety of teaching and learning styles in RE lessons. We believe children learn best when:

  • They have access to, and are able to handle artefacts
  • They go on visits to religious places of worship
  • Visitors talk about their personal experiences of their faith
  • They listen to and interact with stories and sacred texts.
  • They use drama and dance to act out events and interpret beliefs.
  • They create pieces of art work to show expressions of belief and use well-known artwork as a source to complete writing assignments
  • They have access to secondary sources such as books and photographs
  • They are shown, or use independently, resources from the internet and videos
  • They are provided with opportunities to give personal responses on their own experiences, feelings, beliefs, values and ideas in response to the material covered
  • They are provided with opportunities to work independently or collaboratively, to ask as well as answer religious questions

We recognise the fact that we have children of differing abilities in our classes, and so we provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this through a range of strategies such as differentiating by task, expected outcome and/or support from peers or adults

Beyond the Curriculum

Our Mini Vinnies introduces children to social justice issues, to the St Vincent de Paul Society and to living faith through action. Along with our pupil chaplains the children not only think about doing good work in the community, but also talk and share ideas and concerns, have fun, and support each other.

We belong to the family of the parish of The Holy Family in Hartlepool. Canon Paul Douthwaite our parish priest comes into school fortnightly to celebrate mass with the children, staff, parents and the wider parish family.