Identify the Key Stage(s) to which your pupils belong. Find out what they have been doing at their previous school. Discover what they are likely to do if they go on to from your school to another when they are older.
Study the four Themes to be pursued at each Key
Stage (except KS3, which is different, as its introduction explains).
Time and resources will affect how you teach them. You may treat them as
topics, or modules, or however suits your school best.
| The Way of God in The Old Testament | Another Religion | |
| The Way of God in The New Testament | Christianity in Britain |
There are four school years in which to cover these Themes. The most obvious, but the not the most imaginative, approach, would be to take one Theme a year. The main drawback here lies in the way that pupils are likely to lose any sense that the different Themes are connected. If two Themes were taught concurrently, it would be easier to make connections and ensure progression of learning. It would also be useful to build in 'Refresher' courses, especially in the last year of each Key Stage.
Once you have chosen what and how you want to teach, you need to plan your approach to assessment. Commonly, in Religious Education, this has been by end-of-year examination. Essentially, this has told us something about the stage pupils have reached (it is summative). There has been little testing of pupils as they have progressed through the course (formative assessment), let alone any attempt at pupils' assessment of their own achievement. Usually, lack of time, non-specialist staff and inadequate resources have been the cause of this. This Syllabus suggests a pattern for formative, as well as summative assessment.
We can describe the process diagrammatically. This makes explicit what
teachers already do implicitly. A step-by-step example follows.
| Attainment Target | Statements of Attainment |
Write out a Programme of Study (PoS) for that Component. This will need more detail if several teachers are involved. Also parents, Head Teacher, Governors or others may wish to see it.
| Devise a few open-ended tasks or
questions capable of response at a variety of levels. They must be clear in their objectives and care must be taken that both ATs are covered. |
| The descriptions given for each Level become
the Criteria by which response is assessed. A question testing AT1 may be assessable at Levels 4 - 7. |
| Ensure the range of tasks adequately covers
both ATs and all relevant Levels. Pupils need to know their progress both summatively and formatively. |
There will be no national tests in RE but the method of assessment suggested here should enable schools to compare progress in RE with that in other subjects. At KS4 there is no convenient way of assessing progress for non-examination pupils because it is unlikely that sufficient structure, breadth and depth will be possible in the time available. In any case, the higher Levels (8-10) are now subsumed under GCSE grading in the National Curriculum. This Syllabus has retained those notional Levels for the sake of completeness and for the very high-achieving pupil in KS3.
The ISCC RE Panel strongly endorses the stated view of the National
Curriculum Council that where possible RE should be taught to GCSE level.
| KEY STAGE 2 | Way of God
in the O.T. |
Way of God
in the N.T. |
The Church in
Britain |
Judaism | Islam |
| BELIEFS | God as initiator
of the Covenant |
Jesus as Lord
Resurrection |
The Holy Spirit
The Church Universal |
The One God
Creation Covenants |
Allah
Adham - the call to prayer Shirk - the basic sin |
| CELEBRATIONS | Jewish Festivals
Circumcision Pilgrimage |
Baptism and
Confirmation The Christian Year |
Pentecost
Believers' baptism |
Shabbat
Bar/Bat Mitzvah Pesach & other festivals |
Ramadan and
Eid-ul-Fitr Hajj and other festivals |
| ETHICS | Covenant
obligations Law |
Repentance and
forgiveness Self-sacrifice |
Conversion and
change Examples of the sainrs through the ages, especially in Britain |
The Ten
Cammandments Family life, including Kashrut & the role of women |
Ummah
Hala and Haram in diet and other areas of life Zakat and Sadaqah |
| ORIGINS AND
FOUNDERS |
Abraham
Isaac Moses |
Outline of Jesus'
life John the Baptist |
The conversion
of the English Monastic movements |
Refer to Theme A
famous Jewish lives Progressive & Orthodox The spread of world Jewry |
Stories of
Muhammad leaders and scholars over the generations Sunni/Shia separation Makkah & Medina |
| SACRED TEXTS | Structure of the
OT Factual and Mythical Writing |
Structiure of the
NT |
Bible language
and translation into Latin and Anglo-Saxon |
The Jewish Bible:
Tenakh The Talmud |
Qur'an,
compilation & use Arabic Important stories of the prophet |
| WORSHIP | The Tabernacle
The Shema Sacrifice |
Church
buildings Pilgrimage |
Early church in
Acts and early churches in Britain |
Synagogue
Rabbi and Cantor prayers & the Sabbath Service |
Wudu and Salat
Du'a Mosque Imam & Muezzin Ka'ba Hajj |
This diagram shows extracts from the syllabus for Key Stage 2. Teachers would spend varying amounts of time on different parts of a particular course (listed in vertical columns).
The use of Components common to all the courses
enables teachers to make connections and comparisons where appropriate.
Further, whilst either Judaism or Islam (or another religion) might be
studied in some detail, it is easy to see how that which was not studied
in detail at this Key Stage could be referred to briefly. Thus a teacher
would cover material in one of the two right-hand columns in detail and
make a selection of a few topics from the other.