Religious Education (RE) Curriculum

At St Joseph’s, Religious Education is at the heart of the school. We begin and end each day in prayer and link everything we do back to our Catholic and Gospel Values. To develop our pupils’ curiosity and understanding in Religious Education, we provide a creative, bespoke RE curriculum which includes first hand experiences, drama, workshops, hot seating, art, poetry, writing and discussions. We also enhance our RE curriculum by organising educational visits both in and out of school. We are proud of the faith journey that every child makes in our school. Prayer is at the centre of this through worship in the classroom, as a whole school and at Church.

St Joseph’s Approach to Religious Education RE Long Term Plan

Tracking Progress in RE

Due to the nature of our RE curriculum, we accept both verbal and written responses in overall teacher assessment. We assess our children in line with the age related expectation outcomes for RE in each topic, in each year group. Across the year, teachers will provide a best fit judgement based on children’s knowledge, understanding and skills across the year in RE.

Collective Worship

Each day begins with a thoughtful and prayerful collective worship. We encourage our pupils, where possible, to lead aspects of the worship and our older pupils are encouraged to plan and deliver worship themselves. Through our worship, which is focused on a specific virtue, we teach the Gospel values and the importance of being a disciple of Jesus. Our pupils engage with different stories and parables from the Bible and develop their understanding of the Bible through this. Each classroom has a prayer table dedicated to their class Saint. This is a place where pupils gather, reflect and pray.

Feast Days & Liturgical Year Celebrations

Throughout the year, we celebrate our Saint Feast Days and Holy Days of Obligation as well as other religious celebrations e.g. Harvest Festival. We ensure our pupils understand the importance of these special days through carefully planned RE lessons, worship and celebrations as a whole school.

RSHE (Relationship, Sex & Health Education)

Our mission statement commits us to the education of the whole child and we believe that Relationships, Sex & Health Education (RSHE) is an integral part of this education. It is in this context that we commit ourselves in partnership with parents/carers to provide children and young people with positive and prudent relationships and sexual education which is compatible with the their physical, cognitive, psychological and spiritual maturity and rooted in the Catholic vision of education and the human person.

Click here to find out more about our RSHE curriculum.