Religious Education
RE At Newton Hill Community School
Religious Education at Newton Hill Community School provides a contemporary study of religion, preparing children for later life. It provides children with the ‘big questions’ about different religions and provides them with the confidence and knowledge to have open conversations about these in the classroom.
The main aims of the RE curriculum are that children gain an understanding of a range of religions and world views so that they can not only describe and explain their practices, but also investigate and respond to some of the bigger questions posed. The RE curriculum should provide opportunities for children to self-evaluate their own identify, beliefs and feelings of belonging and be able to have an open dialogue about these with others.
At Newton Hill Community School, we follow the Wakefield Agreed Syllabus for teaching RE.
In the Foundation Stage children will encounter Christianity and other faiths through discussing and experiencing a variety of celebrations and festivals from different religions. They will also learn about their growing sense of self, their own community and their place within in. Children’s learning will follow the ‘Understanding Of The World’ strand of the curriculum as well as asking key questions from the units in the syllabus.
At Newton Hill Community School, as well as our weekly RE lessons following the syllabus above, we also celebrate a range of festivals from a variety of religions throughout the year on specific themed days.
We use these festivals to make comparisons between different religions and their special days.
For example:
During Harvest Time we looked at how other religions celebrate Harvest and we learnt about the Jewish festival of Sukkot. We learnt how during Sukkot, Jewish people make a Sukkah out of wood or brick and decorate it with natural materials and this is where they will spend most of their time during this celebration. We worked in teams to design a Sukkah and then collected materials from our Wildlife Garden to decorate.
During Easter, we made connections to the Muslim celebrations of Ramadan and Eid. We looked at how Muslims prepared for and celebrated Eid and learnt that after feasting, food and drink is an important part of this celebration. We participated in this celebration by making our own Mango Lassi.
During Diwali, we looked at the similarities between this traditional Hindu festival and non-religious festivals such as Bonfire Night. During this day, children made rangoli patterns using coloured rice, diya lamps out of salt dough, traditional Hindu sweets as well as learning about the traditions of Hindu people during this festival.
Themed days are also held across the school to celebrate a variety of religious festivals. For example, at Chinese New Year where all children participating in various activities including making Chinese lanterns and masks, writing their names in Chinese, retelling the Zodiac story and making and eating traditional Chinese food.