How I… use thematic units to develop core skills and engage learners

Engaging pupils can be a challenge in Religious and Moral Education (RME). Pupils can arrive with preconceptions of our subject based on a range of external influences.

I would like to give an overview of how I use thematic units to develop skills and engage learners.

In the last academic year, we worked on redeveloping elements of the Broad General Education (S1-3) courses for RME. The main area of my focus was S1 (equivalent to KS3).

Embedding skills for learning, life and work became central to the development of the new and revised units (in line with school improvement priorities). After our introduction to RME through Ultimate Questions, pupils explored a research skills mini-unit based on in-class and at-home activities that focussed on teaching the skills of research, using sources, analysis, and evaluation.

To follow this, it was decided to try a thematic approach for the S1 classes and seek to develop these skills further and introduce Beliefs and Values & Issues across different religious and non-religious viewpoints.

USING…Thematic Units.

Normally, we do not begin to use thematic units until S3 (KS4) and these focus on moral issues, however this new work sought to try a thematic unit from the start of the Secondary RME experience and use it to explore both issues of belief and issues of morality. The unit would be: Who Am I? The Human Condition – the broad scope of the unit was to explore beliefs about The Soul, the Nature of Human Beings, and Responses to Suffering.

TO DEVELOP…Skills.

I was keen to use this as an opportunity to further develop on the previous intensive research skills unit, in order to consolidate the pupils’ confidence in these skills. As we explored the content of the unit we made use of a variety of Making Thinking Visible thinking routines (already being used across the school), Co-operative Learning strategies (in order to provide structure and social skills development to our group and paired work), and Active Learning activities (in order to engage learners), with all these supporting the development of higher order thinking skills.

AS A RESULT…Engaging Learners.

In order to make learning relevant to pupils, I ensured the unit was broken down into small chunks, clearly linking lessons, and identifying contemporary moral issues that were relevant to each lesson.

As we explored the nature of human beings, we introduced debate around the environment and climate change; through teachings about responses to suffering, we explored racism and then poverty and injustice.

Pupils, through short focussed lessons, were engaging with sources that included Plato, Holy Scriptures from Buddhism, Islam, Christianity, and photo journalism. Throughout this unit they explored issues of belief, values and issues, consequences of beliefs, and began to express their own opinion with supporting reasons on the relationship between values and actions.

The result of this thematic approach to learning in S1 was a cohort of pupils who were more engaged in their learning than they were in subsequent single religion units or single-issue units. The pupils were able to demonstrate their progress toward the four capacities in Scottish education (for pupils to become Responsible Citizens, Successful Learners, Effective Contributors, and Confident Individuals). The quality of written answers were higher and more fully developed than in the previous year at this stage due to pupil interest and their ability to connect beliefs to issues. Feedback from pupils in their end of year evaluation has shown how they have appreciated dipping in and out of different religions and relating the beliefs to the world around them.