Markyate Village School And Nursery

Religious Education

At Markyate Village School, Religious Education is designed to enable pupils to become tolerant young people with respect and understanding of the views of others, including the beliefs and practices of world views, religious or otherwise.

Our curriculum ensures that pupils become religiously literate, meaning that they gain coherent knowledge and understanding of Christianity and other principal religions found in Great Britain and the world. We engage pupils to enquire into and explore questions arising from the study of religion and belief. It is not about telling pupils what religious views they should have but rather assists them in gaining shared human understanding, developing personal identity, and searching for meaning in the context of evaluating different viewpoints.

Our curriculum ensures pupils become theologically literate focusing on big concepts which religions are founded, such as God and creation. We want our pupils to not only know about and understand religion, faith and spiritual practices, but also to articulate their own thoughts and ideas (religious or otherwise).

We use an enquiry-based model that allows pupils’ personal and critical thinking skills to be developed, and their empathy with people and their beliefs, religious or otherwise. Importantly, we work to develop a demonstration of respect and compassion towards a range of beliefs and viewpoints so pupils can engage in life in an increasingly diverse society. We reflect faiths represented in the school and wider community but also understand that there is a vital need for diversity across the curriculum. This includes learning about the diversity within worldviews or religions. Our curriculum enables pupils to share and celebrate their own religious beliefs and customs with their class and wider school community. This includes giving our pupils opportunities to go on local trips to religious settings, as well as inviting visitors from different religious settings in the community to visit classes. Our RE curriculum promotes our school attitudes to learning, our golden rules which form the foundations of our school community.

Religious Education at Markyate Village School supports our children to ask, understand and consider deep questions through investigating eight key areas outlined in the Herts Agreed Syllabus:

Beliefs and practices
Sources of wisdom
Symbols and actions
Prayer and worship
Identify and belonging
Ultimate questions
Human responsibility and values and
Justice and fairness

We think it is important that pupils have opportunities to explore religious artefacts and visits to religious places around our local area. We look for opportunities to explore religion in our local community by inviting visitors into our school. An example of this is, our local Church of England Vicar who comes into school to lead assemblies to enrich children’s learning on Christianity. We also invite staff and pupils to talk about their religious beliefs. For example, Mrs Mahammad one of our Teaching Assistants, visits each class to share her family’s Diwali traditions.

Our pupils have opportunities to experience a range of extra-curricular opportunities through the year. Pupils take part in activities to raise money for charities and are part of Harvest festival where we collect and give food donations to the village food bank. Assemblies also provide opportunities to enrich our teaching and learning of RE.

The Impact of our curriculum:
Alongside an evaluation of children’s work, we assess the impact of our curriculum through the behaviour and values children reflect in their everyday life. Children consistently demonstrate harmonious relationships across the school community, a positive attitude and sense of self –worth. These values are modelled consistently by staff.

What our Children tell us:

(R.E.) …. helps you to understand religious belief so when you are older you know what you want to believe in.

You learn to understand different religions and compare them.

We can learn that people are different from us and its ok to be different.

I enjoyed expressing my ideas through writing and drawing. KS2

I enjoyed creating a Sukkah out of Lego for the Jewish festival of Sukkot. KS1

Useful Links and ways to support children with their RE learning

Discuss different religions, beliefs and practices.
Visit places of worship in our community, around the UK and also in other countries around the world.
Read religious stories together and discuss the meaning behind them.
Bitesize:This website offers knowledge and understanding of world religions, their traditions and views.
The School Run: A range of resources designed to inform parents who are supporting their children with their RE learning.
E. Online A calendar of festivals. (Celebrate religious festivals with friends and family.)
Encourage children to ask questions about religion and explore answers together.
St John's Markyate The Benefice of Markyate and Flamstead
Markyate Baptist Markyate Baptist church website
Humanists This webpage is designed for parents to provide information on Humanism education.

What does Religious Education look like in our school?

Whole School - Trees of Kindness

In every class during the spring term, there has been a tree of kindness, an idea that has been linked to Lent . The children have thought about the kind acts that they can do during Lent to help another person. The trees will be shared in our subway frames this term. Here are some of our Trees of Kindness.

Early Years

In our Early Years, the children learn about faiths such as Christianity and they learn that Remembrance Day is a time to reflect on events that have happened in the past and how these events make us think about how we make decisions today.

In December, our Nursery children created a fantastic countdown to Christmas advent calendar featuring the their work.

In Key Stage 1, Year 1 have been learning about how different religions celebrate harvest. The children learned what Sukkot is and how Jewish people celebrate it. All the children designed and built their own Sukkah and were able to talk about its symbolism.

Garnet class have created Christingles after learning about different festivals of light.

Amber class have been exploring the Christian festival of Christmas. The children learned about the ways festivals can bring people together. They identified the events Christians are remembering when they celebrate Christmas and why Christmas matters to Christians. Finally, the children discussed the possibility that the best presents may be to do with love and kindness and that some gifts are invisible (qualities). Each child drew around their hand and wrote their ‘special’ gifts.

In Lower Key Stage 2, Year 4 have been exploring the 5Ks, the Kanda and the importance of Sewa for some Sikhs.

In Upper Key Stage 2, Year 5 have been exploring Jewish artefacts and understanding their importance in the Jewish religion. During the Autumn Term, Quartz and Emerald Classes have also been exploring the incarnation through the Christmas story. Year 6 have completed a unit on Buddhism, that looked at the key teachings of this faith and how the ideas are similar or different to other faiths.