A View From Primary ITE: From Deep Dives to Aim Highs

Ellen is both a teacher of 5-7 year old pupils and an associate lecturer in Primary RE at Sheffield Hallam University
RE is one of my favourite things to teach. It is a subject that some children will know lots about but for others it will be a window into an undiscovered world. However, recent years have seen changes in primary RE from it being covered, in some schools, only during focus days and, quite inappropriately, within assemblies, to when OFSTED introduced subject ‘deep dives’ in England which has led to clearer curriculum planning and higher expectations in primary schools that did not previously take the subject seriously.

I have been teaching for 20 years in primary and infant schools both with and without a religious character. Alongside this, for the last 8 years, I have also worked as an associate lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University preparing ITE students for the rich tapestry that is RE in the primary classroom. This has been an eye-opening journey.

I start the majority of my PGCE and undergraduate sessions with the question “what RE have you already seen in school?” Back in 2018 this was often met with a sea of blank faces – now the room is a little more alive. However, when I ask students about their own experiences of RE, the blank faces remain. The reality is in many schools without a religious character RE is not a high-profile subject, it’s not the one the inspectors want to look at and I’m regularly told “the Teaching Assistant teaches it in my non-contact time”. As a result, many of the trainees I teach know as little if not less than my current Year Twos! For many of our young trainees RE is (by their own admission) the subject they know the least about or worry the most about teaching, and when asked why the answer time and time again is “because I don’t want to get it wrong”.

However, all is not lost! Through our revised Initial Teacher Education (ITE) RE curriculum at Sheffield Hallam the mood is shifting. The students are now working through a clear programme of detailed and relevant subject knowledge, encountering creative, engaging resources and lesson ideas whist having the opportunities to ask questions and look at how stories both religious and secular can be the foundation for high quality RE teaching.

For example, sharing the story of the Good Samaritan with students and allowing them to unpick what they knew before we introduced the parable and what they know now and why they think Jesus thought his listeners need to hear the story helps them to see how they would talk to a key stage 2 class about the same story. Sharing with them images of classical artwork which depict the story and then looking at and planning how an image can be used is vital in enabling students to see what RE can be in their classroom

A big part of teaching the teachers has been not only improving their own subject knowledge but also their understanding of what good RE looks like and sharing with them key resources such as the SHAP audio glossary to help them overcome their fear of mispronouncing key vocabulary. We spend time signposting and discussing what makes a reliable resource – for example the BBC series My Life, My Religion can be key to engaging the children with previously unknown faiths. This also comes with the caveat that while film resources can be excellent, chose your resources carefully. The cartoon of the baptism of the white, blue-eyed Jesus is likely not the one you should be using. However, the clip that uses the words of scripture in a way children can access whilst portraying Jesus as a man who looks like a person from the Middle East is what you should be looking for.

RE is not a bit like circle time or drawing a picture of the story, it is a subject where expectations are high, vocabulary is key and introducing new learning is vital. This is a very long way from the days when the Vicar might come and deliver an assembly or children take part in an Easter Bonnet Parade or the focus day where every class takes part in a Diwali dance workshop. Our students are leaving us ready to challenge these tired and outdated methods of teaching if they find them and so begin shaping more well-rounded citizens of the world.