High View Primary School celebrates its diversity through teaching our pupils about the belief and customs of the whole community and by developing their moral sense. Children collect together for assemblies throughout the week to reflect on their learning, these take place as whole school, phase or as a class.
We encourage all children to participate in RE lessons as knowledge and understanding is extended about a variety of religions.
From Reception and through KS1 children begin to understand more about faith through:
Enquiry; Always start from first-hand experience visits to places of worship, visitors, artefacts encourage questioning by pupils
Investigating; Ask relevant questions about different faiths in a sensitive manner
Interpreting; Drawing meaning from artefacts, symbols, stories, works of art and poetry
Reflecting; Reflect on one's own feelings, thoughts, experiences and relationships
As the children progress through to KS2 they continue to find out about Christianity and other religions from KS1 as well as Hinduism and Sikhism and learn to make connections with features of other religions. For example: exploring the similarities between Hanukkah and Advent. The children are encouraged to describe some religious beliefs and teachings and their importance, including festivals such as Diwali. They explore religious books such as the Bible and the Koran and the importance of these in the lives of Muslims and Christians. They learn how religious beliefs can be expressed through stories and language.
At High View Primary, we believe that children will learn and develop best in the subject of Religious Education by learning not only about religion, but from religion too. We actively encourage visits to and visitors from different places of worship in our local community. This enables us to provide a more rounded approach to RE, helping children to learn in both active and reflective ways.
'In RE we are learning about Hinduism and we have drawn a god and we had to describe it. We had to describe a printed picture of Brahman. In Christianity we wrote an Easter story' Year 4