For Religious Education at Willow Bank Infant School to be a warm, inclusive and inspiring subject where every child feels valued, curious, and confident to explore big questions about life, belief and belonging.
Our RE implementation
We aim for children to enjoy and remember their RE learning at Willow Bank Infant school. We aim to make RE lessons progressive, engaging and memorable to embed the learning, knowledge and skills that children need as a secure foundation of understanding the world around them.
We encourage the children to share their own religious experiences/beliefs, traditions and values with their peers, while recognising and respecting each other’s views and developing an awareness of other people having different religious beliefs and experiences. We strive for all children to show respect and kindness when learning about religions.
Both Willow Bank Infant and Junior schools have planned a progressive curriculum which builds on prior learning, based on Berkshire SACRE and the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE). Our curriculum has been designed in collaboration with RE leaders at other local schools. For each unit of work we follow a key thread of a syllabus question which we refer back to throughout a unit of work. We tailor the NATRE resources appropriately to ensure they follow our school pedagogical approaches, such as introducing key vocabulary in purple font and providing opportunities for talk partner discussion. We also have teacher-planned units for Berkshire SACRE content which is not covered by NATRE. These also follow a key syllabus question and have been carefully thought out to ensure there is full coverage of RE across the school.
Our children also have opportunity to visit Woodley Baptist Church and St Johns Church to enhance their learning. We welcome speakers into school who share their faith beliefs with the children. We hold special community events, such as: decorating the St John’s church Christmas tree, planning Diwali activities and singing carols around the Christmas tree.
