RE Curriculum at Mengham Junior School
At Mengham Junior School, we strive to capture the children’s interest and give opportunities to deepen their thinking and to see from religious and non-religious perspectives. We want our children to be responsive and develop the ability to communicate their opinions with each other and express their thoughts and feelings confidently and respectfully. We endeavour to give them a mature view on the world and to learn the skills and knowledge to be caring, respectful and tolerant and to combat prejudice. Additionally, we encourage children to investigate and reflect on fundamental questions asked by people.
At Mengham Junior School we use the Hampshire Living Difference syllabus as a basis for our learning in RE. We create successful learners through a range of concepts that are experienced by everybody and can be distinctive to different religions: temptation, freedom, ritual, belonging and symbols. Through this conceptual cycle of learning, the children learn to communicate, apply, enquire, contextualise and evaluate their own experiences and use these to support their investigation into different religions. The focus for our religious learning at MJS is Christianity, Judaism and Islam and we build on our understanding throughout each year group. To motivate the children, we immerse them in creative, engaging and varied activities which support all children. We use a range of artefacts, participate in role-play, encourage discussion through Philosophy for Children as well as use a variety of supporting videos. To enhance their learning and understanding further, we invite enlightening visitors from local churches, have a regular collective worship from Open the Book, who bring to life stories from The Bible, and provide the children with trips to religious sites. These varying experiences brighten their learning and lead the children to apply their skills of questioning, debating, comparing, explaining and evaluating to their responses. Through collective worship, we explore current affairs within the world and lead assemblies identifying and recognising a broad range of religious festivals not just limited to those studied in lessons.
Our children extend their thinking and become reflective learners and challenge themselves and each other in all aspects of their learning as well as in their home lives. We also allow them to be responsible members of the community by enabling them to develop an understanding of their local community and the wider world around them. As a religiously diverse school, all children feel comfortable and confident in expressing their beliefs, views and opinions knowing that these will be positively acknowledged and valued. Confidently, they draw on their own lives, grow in their awareness of others, and appreciate how people’s lives are changed by different experiences. Mengham Junior School learners thrive on equality and inclusion, and this is supported through our diverse RE curriculum.