If you are anything like me and wonder where everyone gets the time to read educational journals and books you last set your sights on at university (I am convinced there is a secret community of teachers who own Bernard’s Watch!), then listen up!

My time saving secret is The RE Podcast! It is filled with insights into Religion and Worldviews, available in 10 – 30 minute sessions. As well as covering religious and non-religious worldviews, the podcasts delve into difference and diversity, philosophical debates and address current concerns such as decolonising the language we use and representations of religion in film.

Below I outline five ways the RE Podcast has added value to my understanding and development.

1: CPD for Teachers

Even when I choose a podcast I consider I have good subject knowledge in already, I am always left with greater insights, more examples and personal views to add into my classroom practice. A recent example is ‘The One About the Messianic Judaism’. Messianic Judaism is a topic that I sometimes refer to in lessons, so my knowledge was passable, but after listening to the podcast I have gained greater insight into what Messianic Judaism means in practice. The podcast presents Binyamin Sheldrake, Rabbi of a Messianic synagogue in Norwich, and his own views regarding Yeshua and the links between Jewish beliefs and Christianity. This fascinating interview gave me further understanding of Messianic views of the Trinity and salvation. This will clearly aid me in my lessons on the Jewish view of the Messiah and the Messianic Age.

Each podcast alternates between experts and every day experiences of religion. They are relatable, relevant, and easy to digest without important ideas being watered down. They offer statistics, stories, historical views and religious teachings. You can absorb the information whilst completing other tasks which make them the perfect way to add to your own knowledge without feeling the time restraint of reading heavy articles.

2: Manageable CPD for your department and non-specialists

Many departments contain non-specialists. The podcasts are manageable boosters in subject knowledge that don’t cost money or too much time. It’s easy to pick out topics that are linked to your curriculum, such as ‘The One About Ramadan’ or ‘The One About Easter’. This means the whole department has access to high quality, supportive subject knowledge.

Moreover, the podcasts help to put religion into context rather than the abstract nature of religion often found in textbooks and religious texts themselves. The podcasts have clear links to worldviews thinking, they contextualise religious and secular beliefs, draw on historical, religious and philosophical thinking whilst providing the interviewees personal insights into their faith. This improves accessibility by providing connections that non-specialist colleagues already know about.

3: Extra- and super-curricular activities for students

I have suggested many podcasts to my students for their home learning. This offers a variation on conventional written homework, and they have proven very popular. The podcasts can be used as pre-learning activities, as additional information, extension tasks or as the basis of discussion and P4C stimulus.

Podcasts I recommend for student development are ‘The One About Capital Punishment’, ‘The One Where God Exists’, ‘The One About Abortion and Euthanasia’ and ‘The One Where There Is Life After Death’.

4: Stay up to Date

Many of the podcasts address religious, philosophical and ethical themes from a modern and relevant context, without ignoring the historical roots of theories and religious beliefs. For example, ‘The One About Sikhi’, ‘The One About Halloween’ or ‘The One About Knowledge’. These show a connection between the world today and the subject knowledge I might be covering, allowing a more textured understanding of living religion and belief.

5: Shut out Distractions!

Finally, the podcasts provide background noise to your workouts, accompanies you on car journeys, entertains you whilst doing the housework, or even drowns out the sound of your partner/child/pet!

For more information check out Louisa Jane Smiths website https://www.therepodcast.co.uk/ and listen to The RE Podcast on Spotify or iTunes.

This year we are trialling a new approach to the start of year 7 RE. In my teaching career I have tried several approaches including looking at why we study RE and have never been happy with them. This year I created a new scheme that asks the enquiry question ‘How do we study religion and belief?’

We see students for one hour a week, so time is very tight, and I proposed to my colleague that we trial using a booklet with students. This is a great time saver as students don’t have to write titles each lesson and it’s easy to refer to page numbers which is the same for all of them. I have also found that when exploring a new approach it helps to organise my ideas and share them with my colleague as I’ve had to create and sequence the learning in the booklet.

The booklet pulls together the different ways we can study religion and belief and the things that we look at. One part of this approach involves introducing students to worldviews.

We start by thinking about our own personal worldview. We are clear that this is about how their own views have been developed over time (and will continue to develop) rather than being their specific view on something.

We have used two short clips to support this. The Theos ‘Nobody stands nowhere’ clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFRxKF-Jdos  and this ‘What is your worldview?’ clip. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXnSE0uvwzM

Interestingly, I have found a very small number of students have struggled to grasp this concept. It is very abstract and requires a conceptual understanding of themselves that some students cannot conceive. A couple of my students have replied ‘I don’t have a worldview’ or ‘My view hasn’t changed’. This kind of self-knowledge is a challenge for a small minority of students and colleagues that teach students with some types of SEN may find this more common.

To help students with this abstract concept I chose to use the metaphor of a magnifying glass; to help students understand that our personal worldview is how we ‘see’ things. I have used some ‘big questions’ to help them to understand how their worldview works and then we work together to unpick where our views may have developed from.

I have bought several magnifying glasses to add to the explanation. This has helped students to understand that we all have different personal worldviews as I hold them up when explaining each individual view. It also helps to illustrate other worldviews. I have also shown how these lenses can ‘cross over’ which illustrates how views can be ‘combined’. An example was when we were discussing ‘how did the world get here?’ Students came up with answers ‘God made it’ and ‘the Big Bang’. I held up a lens for each of these views and then crossed them over. For some students this was a new Christian worldview; that God created the Big Bang.

This has helped them to understand that it may be better for us to discuss the many views within a religion for example we discussed ‘Christianities’ as a better term to show that within Christianity there are many different interpretations.

It is interesting to see how their understanding of worldviews is shown in their explanations. Here are responses from two pupils:

“We can study religion and belief by looking at people’s worldviews and opinions. But before we start we need to understand how people get their personal worldview. You are not born in the world with our own opinions as you cannot understand anything yet. But over time as you grow up you start to develop your own worldview and beliefs as you are surrounded by many different influences like your parents and what they believe or your friends and even video games! If you are a religious person your religion may have a big impact on how you see the world as religions normally have quite a lot of sources of authority….”

Jude, Year 7

“We can study religion and belief by looking at our personal worldview. We have got our own worldviews from many things but these aren’t permanent. These worldviews can change throughout your life, for example, when you are younger your parents would be your main authority and sources of your opinions and beliefs but when you’re older you probably wouldn’t take as much notice of them”

Luke, Year 7

It took just moments to decide the focus of my project for the Edge Hill RE Subject Knowledge Summer School. I’ve always loved teaching Islam and enjoyed the challenge of developing my subject knowledge for the 2016 specification. The support of people like Zameer Hussain with Shi’a Islam has been greatly appreciated. However, at times my lessons felt a bit plodding and superficial. I recognised immediately the Ofsted Research Review[i] reference to the use of ‘proof texts’ in GCSE. I’ve been guilty of that. Although I had included some textual analysis and scholarship into my lessons, I still felt I could do better. I knew straight away, therefore, I wanted to develop my confidence with Islamic texts and consider how to deliver the content in a more memorable, engaging and meaningful way. After attending the Summer School, I developed a student anthology with carefully selected and sequenced readings, clearly linked to the specification content.

Day 1 of the Summer School included an inspiring session on text and story by Mary Myatt. She reminded us of something we all know, but too often forget when preparing students to sit exams: humans love stories and stories matter. Daniel Willingham claims ‘our brains privilege story’[ii]. RE has an abundance! Text and story are a wonderful way into learning about the Islamic traditions and can be used to enhance our GCSE. That’s what I set out to do.

Islamic texts are daunting: the many collections of Hadith, the varied commentaries and interpretations. Even as an RE specialist, I worried about my ability to get it right. This is why Edge Hill’s offer is so important. Surrounded by specialists including RE teachers and academics, I could ask questions, share ideas and consider feedback. The very patient Dr Harith Ramil supported me with my project, answering my endless questions, offering suggestions and critiquing my work. If only every RE teacher had opportunities like this.

The ‘final product’ is by no means final. Like the tradition of textual interpretation in Islam, it will continue to evolve. Not everyone will agree with my selections and the interpretations I have offered. However, I’m now able to justify my choices and engage my students in a deeper dialogue about the ways texts and story are used in the tradition. The anthology includes 7 texts from the Qur’an and Hadith, chronologically covering key events in the early development of Islam.

Back in the classroom I have proudly issued Year 10 with their anthologies. Together we have analysed and annotated Al-Fatihah (Surah 1:1-7) and an Al-Bukhari Hadith narrating the Night of Power. I can see Year 10 already have a strong foundation for investigating the Islamic understanding of God and the importance of the Qur’an. They are instinctively referring to the texts they have studied to support their claims rather that ‘sticking in a quote’. Will this have the desired impact? Time will tell, but the early signs are good; students are showing a richer and more contextual knowledge.

Edge Hill will put my resources on their website soon. I have included a list of the many resources I discovered and notes for each text designed to help busy teachers.

I feel privileged and grateful to have had this opportunity. If you get the chance to apply to the Summer School, I recommend you go for it.

[i] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/research-review-series-religious-education/research-review-series-religious-education

[ii] Https://www.marymyatt.com/blog/using-stories-in-the-curriculum

In response to the 2018 CoRE report many SACREs are considering how to update their Locally Agreed Syllabuses. Effecting change in a busy and fast-moving environment such as a school can be a daunting prospect. In this blog I present how we changed our curriculum at my Norfolk Primary school.

This was not just an update or tweak, we adopted change. We reshaped the curriculum to utilise three disciplinary pedagogies, imagined as lenses to look through; Theology, Philosophy and the Human & Social Sciences. As these names are quite the tongue twister, we call them Believing, Thinking and Living in my school when discussing with younger learners.

With a new pedagogy and new freedom in mind I sat down to look at our current RE curriculum and discussed with children what they thought of the subject:

“I like doing our stuff but it’s interesting to see their stuff and see how different people live.”

Having heard their thoughts, I threw the old curriculum in the bin and started afresh.

Our stuff and their stuff

Our student body is 95% white British and Christian heritage. It is for this reason I do not want children learning about “our stuff” (Christianity) followed by an entirely different unit of “their stuff” (everything else).

If children are to see the beauty and value of other people, religions and worldviews they will need the skills to appreciate them and, most importantly, find ways of connecting with them. This got me thinking about exploring: if you know where you have been, it gives you a good basis to explore the new. So, I decided to be bold: every unit of learning would start with Christianity. We would learn about what we already know, or thought we knew or (in the case of Christmas) thought we knew but was actually wrong; and then branch outwards. Finding links and connections between Christianity and Religions & Worldviews would form the bedrock of our curriculum.

Branching out

We are a church school and therefore at least 50% of our learning content focuses on Christianity. The first 3 or 4 lessons of each half-term have a Christian focus. This gives time to explore our Key Question and reflect on Christianity’s answers. From this solid understanding we can branch out to consider how one or more other traditions would respond.

For example a Year 6 unit begins by pondered the philosophical question, ‘why was the Earth made?’ using Genesis 1 and 2. They explore the different presentation of women and learn that the books  were written at different times by different authors and then collated together at a much later date. A lesson is spent looking at the scientific description of how the Earth was formed and what similarities this has to Genesis. This allows pupils to gain a greater sense of the context and concerns at the time Genesis was recorded.

From here we branch out to the events of the Hindu creation story and its expression of our universe as one in string of many (Samsara on a universal scale). Children quickly spot the beginning of the world in darkness and water and how a prime mover is needed to bring light and life into the world.

The most important part of the new curriculum is that the children begin by finding what is the same and then questioning why they are the same. How can two religions from different sides of the planet have similar beliefs? How can two faiths that appear so different actually be quite similar? This allows discussions of depth and richness.

Growing this new curriculum and pedagogy has taken time and lots of energy from the amazing staff at my school. As we move further towards a R&W curriculum, emphasis will be placed on denominations and how, for instance, there is no single “Christian Worldview”. The aim is that children can see how worldviews similar to their own can be very different, whilst the superficially different can be very similar.

Would you start an RE lesson with a boxing match? By that we mean a lesson about a famous boxing match, not a re-enactment in the classroom! To celebrate Black History Month we present a set of four learning sessions (suitable for Key Stages 2- 4) on Muhammad Ali, one of the world’s all-time greatest boxers. Ali was also a conscientious objector, antiracist activist and devoted Muslim. All these aspects of his life are intertwined, as our multiple worldviews are. As well as a contribution to teaching resources for Black History Month, these lessons are also an example of what worldviews can look like in the classroom.

Pupils might be confused to learn about a famous fight in RE, although some would absolutely love it. During his career as a boxer Ali fought in and won several iconic fights. His sporting career illustrates how he constantly challenged preconceived ideas about how a black athlete should behave in public. In our lessons, we present Ali’s actions inside the ring as just as important to an understanding of him as those outside. In a worldviews approach, the strands of someone’s life and context cannot be separated.

Ali was once called the most famous Muslim in America. Like most people Ali sometimes had contradictory beliefs and his Islamic interests shifted over the years. In our lessons we trace Ali’s path from Nation of Islam to Sufi Islam, to Sunni Islam. Pupils will consider Nation of Islam in historical and political terms, as well as religious.

After he had won the 1964 match, Cassius Clay announced to the world the name he now wanted to be known as: Muhammad Ali. He had always been interested in Islam. At high school he wanted to write an English paper on black Muslims (Nation of Islam), but was not allowed to. Muhammad Ali first saw Malcom X, one of the most influential black figures of his time when he spoke at a Nation of Islam rally and the two became friends. Malcom X watched Ali’s 1964 match with Sonny Liston match from the side-lines. The next day as the world was still in shock over Ali’s victory, with Malcom X by his side, he announced he was a Muslim and that he had a new name. He said ‘Cassius Clay is a slave name, I didn’t choose it and I don’t want it. I am Muhmmad Ali, a free name – it means beloved of God, and I insist people use it when they speak to me’.

Incredibly Ali visited the town of South Shields in 1977 to have his marriage blessed in the mosque there. The Al-Azhar Mosque serves the Yemeni community of South Shields, who had settled in the area around the First World War to work for the Merchant Navy. A short documentary details this moment, showing footage of Ali and his wife in South Shields and the pride of the local Yemeni community to welcome this dazzling figure to their mosque. In our lessons we give a link to this documentary, created by photographer and artist Tina Ghavari.

A worldviews approach to learning about Ali, whether in a lesson or at a lunchtime or whole-school event, means his antiracist struggle or his devotion to Islam is not separated from his whole life. Ali was an athlete, a campaigner, a public figure, a conscientious objector, a husband and father and a Muslim. All these strands make up the man. We hope you enjoy exploring Muhammad Ali with your pupils, you can find the resources on RE:ONLINE here.

Kate Christopher, part-time in a Secondary school teacher in East London and independent RE adviser

Lynn Revell, Faculty Director of Research, Canterbury Christ Chuch University

Change is not something humans do well. Starting a new job is listed as one of the most stressful events in our lives, so when the new Norfolk Agreed Syllabus called for a new curriculum and new pedagogy in RE, it was a revolution that would require empathetic leadership and lots of planning.

At the heart of the new Syllabus is a multi-disciplinary pedagogy (often called Balanced RE). The approach explores suggested key questions through three lenses: theological (thinking through believing and studying sacred texts), philosophical (thinking through thinking) and the human & social sciences (thinking through living). Students apply each of these lenses equally over the course of a year, using all three lenses to a greater or lesser degree within each unit. The new Syllabus gives suggested units and key questions with a focus on comparing and contrasting religions and to foster “informed conversations about religions and world views”.

To begin our revolution, I firstly – and most importantly – made clear the reason for change: using Balanced RE as our pedagogy supported the aims of the new Agreed Syllabus and would enhance our teaching. I was honest about the challenges ahead and how I would be supporting staff to overcome them as this would be a major change from what we have done before. Risk assessing the change and planning ahead not only negates issues but also reassures staff you are thinking about them.

Talking the talk was easy, now staff had to walk the walk. I gave out sample units so staff could use the new pedagogy without the added work of designing new lessons. Staff were invited to adapt current units to the new pedagogy if this better suited their long-term plans. Giving staff a choice garnered support for the change. For 6 months we trialed units and met regularly to share successes and improve subject knowledge through CPD. Whilst this change was for the benefit of pupils, it was the staff delivering the revolution, so my time and budget was concentrated on them.

With the start of a new academic year, it was time to fully launch the new curriculum. Communication is key: I regularly updated the Curriculum documents, so staff had a single central source to refer to – especially after CPD to include new content or to address questions. Between the various guides, curriculum maps and unit templates these writings are at 12,000 words and counting! We continued to meet each half term for staff to share their success and for me to share what I had been less successful with in my own lessons. A little humility won a lot of support and allowed me to highlight points for development for the staff whilst using my own teaching as a talking point.

Staff training became key. I developed training in conjunction with our school’s vicar (who just happened to have previously been a Secondary RE teacher) and another member of staff with a Theology background. There was not a ready supply of external agencies to provide Primary RE CPD so we designed and built our own. Yes, it was scary to do – but it was also really successful.

Two years in the revolution is still going strong. Staff are confident in the new pedagogy and have taken the new curriculum in great directions I had not expected. I am now more the “guide on the side” than leading from the front. This revolution has been full of smiles and accomplishment which has shown me the importance of teaching our own teachers.

If you would like to read about how Matthew used John Kotter’s 8 Step-Process for Change Management to support this revolution, you can find his article published in TES https://www.tes.com/magazine/article/how-lead-curriculum-revolution (paywall).

A time to reflect

I’m sat writing this in a trendy coffee bar, where I’m intimidated into ordering the only drink name that I recognise, it is already deep into the summer holidays (although the weather outside would make you think otherwise), which means that I don’t mind watching the world go by and making it look that I’m working on some profound prose – a look which I think I’ve perfected well.

This summer I’ve been able to switch off more than ever, I slipped seamlessly from a long and full on term, to a relaxing and culturally enriching time travelling in Germany (a beautiful country which despite my numerous visits, I have still failed to grasp the language). Now despite having around half the holiday left, I knew that I needed to start getting my brain back into gear, something which took an adventurous leap into a coffee which I couldn’t pronounce and hadn’t tried before.

As a sat watching the rain fall outside and the seemingly mammoth task of what I needed to prepare for the coming school year (having recently been appointed as a Head of Department – the RE:Online practical checklist has been a real help with this https://www.reonline.org.uk/leading-re/a-practical-checklist/) I started to firstly think back to what I had already tried to do in the year gone by. I’ve thought about curriculum design a lot in the past, normally whilst completely caught up in the hustle and bustle of teaching and the chaos of school life – which isn’t always a situation conducive to innovation in the classroom.

Not one to shy away from a weather metaphor, as the weather started to clear so did my mind and the fog that hung over my thoughts started to shift, giving me much needed clearance on the path that I knew I needed to take.

A wider focus

Too often my focus has been too narrow, focussing on just the aims and purposes of the subject itself, but I’ve rarely looked at the wider picture of what RE can build on from other subjects, or equally as important, what other subjects desperately need from RE.

For example, we have often explored topics such as the Holocaust without due regard to when this has been studied in History, conversely in History they study the Reformation without consulting us on what prior knowledge they may have acquired from their RE lessons. Similarly, we look at ethical issues such as abortion without considering what knowledge they may have from science and in their science lessons they approach the ethical side of genetic testing without seeing which philosophical skills they have developed in their RE lessons.

In my previous blogs I’ve tried to explore the nature and direction of what I am trying to achieve in my subject for the students that I teach, but my focus has been too narrow, if I want pupils to really enjoy and excel in the subject, then I need to look beyond the subject itself – to see what other subjects offer to RE and what RE offers to them – this I believe will be central to rooting RE at the core of the curriculum, as no other subject has the power and overlap to do this.

This isn’t to say that I want RE to run as a course to purely compliment other subjects, I want to develop a real passion for the subject with my students. However, I also want to make better use of the material that is studied and learned in other subjects as well as showing students the wider importance and appeal of the subject itself.

For this stage I had to hurry home (partly because of the rain, partly because I was on a roll) in search of the biggest piece of paper that I could find. I started by mapping out all of the topics that I want and need students to study. My initial draft looked just at topic headings, then with a different colour I went through and started fleshing out the details, what do I actually want students to learn in those topics, with a third colour I went through and added in the areas of my curriculum that linked, with a fourth I went and wrote in curriculum links that I knew already existed. Now, at this point I’ve hit a stumbling block – there is so much of the curriculum that I’m completely unaware of.

In English for example, I know that they look at poems, plays (at least one is bound to be Shakespeare) and different novels. Which ones they look at, however, I’m completely at a loss. But there are bound to be invaluable links that are just waiting to be built upon, but as of yet are completely hidden within the curriculum that we are building.

Whilst I can start building my new curriculum around what I already know, there will still be a lot of work and collaboration amongst departments that will need to happen across the next academic year to ensure that a genuinely coherent and supported curriculum is offered to our students.

A new direction

I believe that having the curriculum mapped out in a really explicit way, with the links and progressions between skills and content is essential, not only for teaching, but also for pupils to be aware of. If we are trying to help them to navigate their way through a complex, and often confusing, curriculum then the least we can do is provide them with a road-map of how we go from A-B.

As a example of what our new Y7 will be studying:

– What influences us?

– Should we follow rules?

– Moral maze

– When disaster strikes

– Religion in the media

– Philosophical thinking

Now, there are six topics, but these do not correspond to the fact that there are six terms in the school year. These topics introduce pupils to a range of disciplines – theology, ethics and philosophy – tackling ideas in a more thematic way. For example, the ‘When disaster strikes’ topic will look at natural events and how Christians would be influenced by their beliefs to act in charitable ways to help those in need.

In many ways this reflects aspects of the GCSE exams, but is also driven by feedback that came from student voice sessions that I ran with current A-Level, GCSE and KS3 students – those who had picked the subject and those that hadn’t. Now, this might sound like I’ve just gone for topics that are the ‘fun’ ones in an attempt to win over the pupils, but I’ve mapped out all of the requirements from the locally agreed syllabus to ensure that the curriculum we are offering is completely compliant. I’ve also ensured that it equips students with the full knowledge that we would want them to have. The religion in the media topic, for example, looks at issues such as offence whether through portrayal of Christianity in comedies, or the misrepresentation of Islam and terrorism.

The coming year

The next year is going to be a steep learning curve, I’ll be starting my sixth year teaching and it will be my first as a Head of Department – I’ve been developing schemes of work for my whole teaching career, but with the new changes from Ofsted it feels like a whole different responsibility altogether.

There will also be non-specialists teaching the subject, meaning that the resources and training that I need to provide will need to work to ensure that the lessons taught remain engaging and relevant.

I will also be making a big push on the subject, not only in terms of visibility across the school, but with families at home and also in terms of further career opportunities. I have a set of the brilliant posters produced by RE:Online and will be doing as much as possible to raise the profile of the subject and challenge the parental misconceptions of what we learn in the subject – for example, each topic will have a homework task which involves working with a parent/guardian.

Without a doubt there is a big task ahead, but it will also be enjoyable and rewarding. Hopefully my next few blogs will be detailing the successes that I am having – but also the challenges that I face.

AREIAC 2019’s conference was entitled Agents of Change: RE Leadership in a New World.
A New World; state of flux; uncertainty; chaos; challenging times. One RE adviser laughed, “When has RE not been in challenging times?”. As an “emerging leader” in the RE community, I must confess to being excited by this New World – in it I see potential, I see opportunity, I see hope. But, like many hopeful leaders, I don’t really know where to start.

I don’t know where to start was the point Ben Wood, Chair of NATRE and Head of RE at Haslingden High School, made in his reflections on how to change a curriculum. As a RE subject lead currently grappling with curriculum choice, I felt an enormous sense of relief listening to Ben. If he, who has read widely, shared widely and climbed to the top of the RE game, doesn’t know where to start, it’s OK that I am still deeply uncertain. Hear this, RE Subject leaders – uncertainty is OK. Don’t let the fact that, as Ben admits, the curriculum occasionally keeps us awake at night lead to paralysis. Maybe, due to the paradox of choice, we will never be satisfied.

Ben argues for the value of constraint as we consider our curriculum choices, he suggests we should enforce constraints on ourselves that chiefly concern us as teachers in school. Constraints of time, planning the planning, using subject knowledge and playing to our own strengths. Your constraints will depend on your school your circumstances. I feel now, it’s OK to take the time to look before I leap in curriculum choice – with the knowledge that I will have to leap!

Curriculum choice is keeping me awake at night. I anticipated hearing Mary Myatt speak on Curriculum: Controversies, Concepts and Conversations. Since initial RE CPD, I have been profoundly influenced by her philosophy: RE should have beauty and depth. Mary reminds us to run our schools for our children not inspectors; OFSTED are not looking for anything – they are looking at what we’re doing. When planning our curriculum, we must begin with the end – what do we want children to know at the end? It is too easy to get caught up in content and to forget that RE needs to be underpinned by demanding concepts, big ideas – we’re trying to make our learners think. We must privilege thinking over task completion, this is important for the teacher to remember in the classroom – this is empowering.

Richard Kueh too spoke of empowerment. In these times of change, we need to prioritise RE teacher agency, we must nourish, nurture, strengthen and challenge our teachers. When shaping and crafting teacher agency, teachers must have intellectual confidence, without which they are left to drown in complexity. Richard pointed out, to a room full of advisers, that there was a gulf between advisers and emerging leaders in the classroom – there is a tension here, can we make this a productive tension? There is a need for mentoring, for transformative change leading to a community of professional hybrids. Advisers must cultivate teacher agency beyond the classroom to ensure a legacy which elevates beyond new heights.

This is where my own story jigsaws in, as one of the first cohort of AREIAC REvitalise mentees. I am a HLTA who has been leading RE in a large primary school for nine years, during which time I have carried out research, led CPD, completed leadership programmes and led our school to the gold REQM. Over the last year, I have benefited from the mentoring support of Jan McGuire, an RE Adviser and former teacher. The personalised guidance of an experienced mentor has “bridged the gulf” between adviser and this emerging leader, this “professional hybrid”. At the conference, I shared with delegates how REvitalise has been a professionally formative experience. During this year, in which I became the NATRE East Anglia Regional Ambassador, culminating at the AREIAC conference, I had the opportunity to think beyond the classroom, beyond my school, my MAT, my region to a “New World” national RE agenda. These bigger picture considerations I now feel empowered to take back to my region, my MAT, my school and back to my classroom, which is after all, where the big picture really matters.

Our KS3 curriculum, save a few new topics I’ve introduced, looks pretty much the same since I started here three years ago. It’s always worked well, students are engaged and since changing to an option subject, we’ve had good uptake at GCSE, but we seem to be doing the same old thing, without much thought about why we are doing it that way.

I’ve talked about the changes we’ve been making, but often these are about the content, rather than the underlying pedagogy. Now ‘knowledge rich’ and ‘retrieval practice’ do seem to be the buzzwords of the moment and it doesn’t take much scrolling through my twitter timeline before I’ve spotted it at least half a dozen times, ‘retrieval practice’ appears a little less often, but

What do we mean by ‘knowledge rich’?

Ofsted have defined it as the ‘invaluable knowledge [teachers] want their pupils to know’. Now, you might take issue with this, after all it seems to imply that we’ve just been teaching students any old thing, without proper consideration of why.

Whilst I disagree with this interpretation, I would say that it is true that we haven’t always been explicit enough with what we want students to know. The more explicit we are, the more it will help students and the more it will help us as a department in ensuring that absolutely everything that we need to cover, has been covered.

This isn’t a move towards the robotic delivery of information, it is up to each individual teacher how they deliver the information, but we can be sure that at the end of a lesson or sequence of lessons, that regardless of the teacher, the students will have been taught and should know the same things. This means that there is no risk or worry that some groups haven’t been taught certain material.

I don’t see a knowledge rich curriculum as being a million miles away from how we plan lessons and schemes of work currently. It’s just that the detail we use is far greater. It has also been a fantastic part of CPD and subject knowledge development as we really get to grips with the material that we are wanting to teach.

And retrieval practice?

Retrieval practice is all about the process of forgetting, then forcing yourself to remember. It’s how we are making sure that the information sticks and one of the processes that I believe has led to our improving GCSE results.

When I first heard about retrieval practice, it was sold to me as a sort of revision activity, but it really isn’t. It is something that is interwoven throughout the learning process, rather than something tacked on to the end of a unit of study.

The main premise of retrieval practice is that by recalling memories we are then changing that memory by making it more lasting. This has been shown in studies and has most noticeable application for the learning of facts and whilst many outsiders may have the perception that RE is one of those subjects where there is no right or wrong, us on the inside know that simply isn’t true. We do need students to know factual information.

So, it’s basically revision, right?

Wrong. I’ve many objections to what is traditionally conceived of as revision which includes, but is not limited to the following:

• It discourages learning the information properly the first time around – a sort of “don’t worry if you don’t get it now – we’ll revise it later” mentality.
• It encourages cramming – as a result it undermines a deep understanding of a topic/subject.
• It often puts the emphasis on the production of revision resources, rather than the effective use of them.
• They just don’t make the difference that we think they’re making (i.e. they make us feel better, rather than making a student’s learning more secure).

Retrieval practice by contrast discourages short-term learning and focuses instead on developing and maintaining long-term retention of knowledge as well as the ability to better apply the knowledge to new and unfamiliar topics.

So, what does it look like in the classroom?

Having a knowledge rich curriculum has been a hugely positive experience, without a huge workload. By being explicit with what needs to be learned it has meant a greater ability for teachers and students to reflect on progress that is being made.

The greater clarity around what is being taught and what needs to be learned has also meant that teachers have thought much more carefully about what needs to be learned and how it is being delivered, ultimately meaning more purposeful task setting.

For example, in the past we have studied the life of Jesus – previously our SoW would have listed something as superficial as birth, life, death and resurrection. We used to think that was more than enough detail, I mean surely that is enough detailed for a well-trained teacher of RE. Well, we found that it wasn’t, it gives no sense of priority, what if one teacher gives lots of attention to the miraculous nature of Jesus’ birth, but another teacher gives lots of attention to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and a third gives their priority to the story of Palm Sunday. We wouldn’t have a cohesive curriculum.

The knowledge we require is now set out far more comprehensively, if looking at Jesus’ birth my SoW would be detailed enough to say, for example:

• Gospel of Luke
• Gospel of Matthew
• Importance of prophecy
• Born in Bethlehem
• Birth of divine intervention, to fulfil the will of God to save the world from sin

It could go into much more detail to look at the flight to Egypt, the visit of the Magi, etc. I could also state that comparisons between the Gospels of Luke and Matthew are to be made and to highlight what those key differences are. The SoW that we follow doesn’t spell out which activities need to be done – the way it is taught is down to the individual teacher, but the content that needs to be covered is clear.

The only real visual different is the introduction of knowledge organisers – something that I’m sure most of us are familiar with at this stage. Whilst seemingly straight-forward, I would argue that there is much more skill and nuance to an effective knowledge organiser. It is an area that I am still learning and growing in, but I have been heavily influenced by the work of Oli Caviglioli and the Learning Scientists – the idea is that the practice of dual-coding will be built into the resources over time.

I feel like I’ve forgotten something here…

The more noticeable change is with retrieval practice – these can take many, many forms – from mind-mapping information, writing a list of key points for a topic, to low-stakes testing. The key is that they are active in the process of remembering (or retrieving) the information. One of the biggest annoyances in my life is when a student is asked to create a mind-map, they sit there with their books and notes open making it look really nice, lots of different colours with parts highlighted and huge paragraphs copied out. Then at the end, they fold it in half and put it in the back of their book to forget about until they have a test, in the belief that making the mind-map is the revision itself.

Yes, my students will have made mind-maps by reading and reducing their notes, but I impress on them the importance of not just reading over it again and again. If they’re using mind-maps, then what they have to do is read over it, then recreate from memory. Once they’ve remembered all they can, then they check against the original to see what they’ve missed. Then they repeat from memory again.

This is always supplemented by low-stakes testing, pupils start each lesson with five quick questions (5QQ) which is used to test them on older material, especially that which they have struggled with before, and to encourage them to retrieve knowledge which they will need to use and apply to the lesson they are in – for example in a lesson focusing on different Christian attitudes on divorce, I might ask a recall question on different Christian denominations, or the Reformation.

Structurally my lessons are different – but not so different – from how they were before. Retrieval forms a key part of everything that we do, but it isn’t just about retrieving any old information, I want it to be specific and focused to reinforce the learning of old material and to support new learning.

Throughout a lesson we will be learning new information – the forgetting period (in my opinion at least) has not been significant enough at this stage, so I would ask/design retrieval activities for pupils to draw upon information they have learned before which would reinforce what they are currently learning now.

We finish lesson retrieving information learned that lesson, the past few lessons and across the course – this is done in the form of low-stakes testing. We take time to discuss the answers afterwards to address misconceptions. I take particular note of which ideas students are struggling with. We either go through them in more depth or if it would be something I would require them to retrieve more frequently include them in activities like the 5QQ.

And outside the classroom?

Away from the classroom I still want pupils to perform retrieval practice – I therefore set activities to assist in this. I cannot be certain that pupils are not just copying from what they already have in their notes, therefore I supplement these activities with the low-stakes testing in lessons. Activities I would set to encourage retrieval practice are (though not limited to):

Concept mapping – sometimes they take their folders with them, other times I get them to leave their notes and folders with me. They then have to go home and concept map everything they can remember about a topic. I keep this as focused as possible, instead of everything they know about the Relationships and Families topic, I would request them to concept map divorce and I would give them guidance on the things to include, e.g. Christian attitudes. In the lesson it is due we then have the opportunity to compare to the original notes, in a different colour adding in what is missing. Then, once all is updated, it needs to be put away and the concept map is redone – all from memory.

Online quizzing – there are a variety of platforms for this. I set generous time-limits for each question to be answered in, not because I am trying to penalize those who take longer to retrieve the information, but I want to reduce the temptation to try and look up the answer in the notes. It also allows me to see which ideas or concepts pupils may be struggling with.

Look, cover, write, check – I used to have to do this for spelling practice when I was in primary. It always struck me as a useful way of forcing yourself to remember, we use this for key words and definitions as well as religious teachings.

Religious teaching matching – It’s no use students remembering religious teachings if they can’t apply them to new situations/scenarios. Students will be given a sheet with concepts listed, these could be from the same topic, or across topics. They then need to remember and correctly apply the teaching to the correct concept. The twist being that the sheet does not mention the teachings that they need to use.

How do we know that it works?

Being more knowledge-focused has definitely helped our professional discussions and student voice interviews have highlighted how pupils really like the clarity of what they are learning, especially when it comes to definitions. It has also made teacher- and self-assessment much more purposeful, as both are really clear on where a student is, and progress is much clearer to see.

Retrieval practice has had more noticeable advantages, the first exam class I tried it with performed amazingly well and several far exceeded expectations. Speaking to many of them afterwards they explained how the way we worked and the fact that we were always quizzing on the material really helped them when it came to knowing the information that they needed.

This is the beginning of a journey and needs to become more fully embedded in our practice as a department, but I believe that it sets solid foundations for which to build high-quality Religious Education on top of.

I’ve written and tweeted plenty about what I’m doing at KS4, but there’s still something that keeps me up at night. KS3. Now, I’m sure that many of you might be in a similar situation to me, where you spend a lot of time playing catch-up with the curriculum and the recent changes were certainly a big task to contend with.

Background
In my school we have moved Religious Studies to an option subject, that’s a move that happened with the introduction of the new syllabus. We just couldn’t see a way in which we could cover the material of the new course within the hour a week timetable allocation that we were given as a core subject.

In the first year (and the year that I joined the school) we had an uptake of 17 students and we achieved an amazing set of results with a fantastic bunch of students. The year after we couldn’t attract enough students to run a class, the students had had a fairly negative attitude towards the subject. I had already started to change a few parts of the curriculum, but there was certainly a feeling that putting plasters on a sinking ship might have been more effective and that bigger changes were needed.

This year is the first year in which we have started GCSE from Y9, meaning that we have an option group in Y10 and in Y9 who are both starting their GCSE. They had both started to benefit from the changes that were being introduced, our Y10 class has 16, whilst our Y9 class has 25 (with another interested in joining us). Given the disappointment of not having a Y11 class this year, it has been a huge boost of confidence seeing the number of students growing like this.

What the kids think
Whilst it isn’t giving me nightmares, it doesn’t leave me feeling easy knowing that our KS3 offering isn’t where it needs to be, and if we want to keep building the profile of the subject at GCSE, then we not only need an engaging and relevant curriculum, we also need to develop a secure foundation of both knowledge and skills to ensure that pupils can succeed at GCSE, but before I started making any large-scale changes, I decided to speak to some students first. Some who are currently in Year 8 and others who are in Year 9 and 10 – I would then be able to use this to base my changes upon.

I had half expected a lot of respondents saying that they wanted ‘fun’ lessons – I wasn’t wrong, but when students were asked to explain what that meant, that’s where I definitely was wrong. I’d expected a strong showing of disapproval for topics involving religions – historically this was an area the pupils weren’t too keen on, with them much preferring the philosophical and ethical topics that we have studied.

This is where I was pleasantly surprised and it has given me real encouragement for how we are teaching religion now at the school. I’ve always believed that student voice is an integral part of a decision-making process – one that must be taken in consideration with other perspectives as well. Pupils had a real disliking (so did I to be honest) of the pub quiz, death by a thousand facts style of Religious Studies that they had before, an issue that grew out of (but isn’t excused by) the number of non-subject specialists that had taught the subject.

Whilst there was some spread of topics that they particularly enjoyed, the two most talked about units of study were Religion and the Media, and Philosophy (which I based upon a P4C course run by SAPERE that I attended). I was particularly pleased by these choices as they had been units of work that I had introduced to the school’s curriculum and is starting to show how we are making progress – not only in terms of our outcomes at GCSE, but also in making the subject a popular GCSE subject choice.

Religion in the Media
I’ve done Religion and the Media topics before and, if I’m honest, they’ve been pretty dreadful. Relying much too heavily upon the piece of media (usually a film) and not the subject content enough. This needed to change, so I got to work.

This unit took a focus from an Islamic and Christian perspective so that we could build a depth of knowledge over several lessons. The unit relied on newspaper articles, TV news excerpts and short sections of film or TV shows, whilst this is nothing unusual in a Religious Studies classroom, I wanted to avoid the ill-fated ‘Here’s a film, fill this sheet in as you go along’ lesson that we’ve all seen before.

To make it a success I knew that I needed to start from the end – what do I actually want pupils to know and what skills do I want them to learn? In terms of content I want pupils to have a good grounding in key theological concepts – such as the nature of God, or Biblical stories. For skills I want them, amongst other things, to understand, interpret and analyse different interpretations and perspectives. Once I had these in mind, I needed to select appropriate sources from the media. It is key that selecting the media source comes after, it is wrong to be forced into teaching the pupils something different from the key ideas you want them to know. This might take more searching – but it will be much more enriching as an educational experience (for you and your students).

Alllllllrighty then…
When it came to the nature of God (a topic important not just because it appears in the GCSE but is part of a well-rounded and well-informed religious education), I remembered that there is a short (ten minutes at most) section of the film Bruce Almighty which nicely sets out different examples of God’s qualities (Omniscience, omnipotence, etc.)

The lesson was shaped around the idea of God’s qualities, what these may look like in practice and the idea of how a Christian may respond when presented with a depiction of God in this way. This encourages some deeper theological thinking from the students, it’s not just a watch and note down exercise, they are really having to engage with some philosophical questions around the nature of God.

The vast majority of the lesson is spent exploring God’s qualities – what do the words mean, what are the implications of these ideas. The section of film allows pupils to see if they can ‘observe’ these qualities being demonstrated. The final discussion is around how religious believers might feel seeing God represented in this way, and does the nature of the film (a comedy) have any implications?

D’Oh
In another lesson, I wanted students to learn about Biblical stories and how these could be interpreted and represented in the media. Now there are countless retellings of Biblical stories out there, from short animations, to high-budget cinematic efforts such as The Bible (which I believe is widely available online). However, I wanted to choose something a little different and I went for the Simpsons. Choosing your media source is key and so is knowing your class, so pick wisely.

The episode I chose is called Simpson’s Bible Stories – I think it is season 10, you’ll have to get the DVD as you won’t find it on Youtube. The episode retells different stories from the Bible – Adam and Eve, the Ten Plagues of Egypt, King Solomon and a very loose reimaging of a David vs Goliath sequel. These episodes are easy to access, but to really understand them they need a high level of religious literacy.

To develop the religious literacy level required we start by looking at the original story. I normally just pick one part of the episode and it is either the Adam and Eve, or Ten Plagues story. These tend to work best as pupils tend to have a little familiarity with the story anyway. We start by looking up the story in the Bible, itself a lesson on how to use one.

Next, we really take our time reading through the story, getting to grips with what happened, understanding what certain words mean. If we don’t spend a proper amount of time on this, then what will come after just won’t make sense.

Once I’m sure they have a secure understanding of the story we talk about different ways of interpreting something and what the ideas of literal and metaphorical mean. Then we move on to why the Simpsons writers would want to do an episode on this topic. Then and only then, are we ready to the watch the relevant part of the episode.

Using the Simpsons episode, it becomes clear that the writers have moved quite far from the original story – we talk about parts that have changed, exploring what the original story said and what the Simpsons version did instead, we would then talk about why this would happen (i.e. the Simpsons is going after laughs, the Bible wasn’t)

The important thing is to really get to grips with the original story – the pupils will only get the maximum impact if their religious literacy is developed to a point where seeing a parody of the story will make sense. This means that you really have to ensure that you have taken your time with the original story, you need to explore ideas around interpretations and you have to explain how this story comes from a Holy book and therefore has a real importance to the followers of that religion.

Though the topic is called Religion in the Media – the focus is religion. Importantly it is about developing a solid understanding of key religious beliefs, teachings and stories. The ‘media’ is partly how that understanding is transmitted to and explored with the pupils.

Islam in the Media
When we turn to Islam, we explore ideas of the media portrayal of Islam. With pupils we explore some of the questions that they want to ask, but are worried about asking, the question of terrorism drives a large part of the discussion. As one of my pupils explained, ‘it is difficult, because I don’t know any Muslims and when I hear about them it is always bad things. So, I don’t really know what to think, because I don’t think what they say can be true. But I just don’t know.’

It is important not to shy away from this, nor to just close it down and tell pupils off for holding the view. They need to explore some of the key teachings and ideas from Islam and to be shown how there has been a media bias which has created a negative impression of the religion which is not rooted in any ideology and that terrorist groups such as Daesh is not rooted in Islamic belief.

This is obviously a huge topic and normally it stretches over several lessons. One where we get to grips with some key teachings and beliefs from Islam. Again, we learn about the importance of interpretation and understanding. We then see how these ideas sit at odds with ideas of violence and terrorism.

Next Steps
There are certainly some additional things that I’d like to introduce to this unit of study. The key one would certainly be speakers from different faith backgrounds. A fair amount of the interpretation that we are doing is from speculation. If I’m unable to bring speakers in, then I definitely need to make far greater use of RE:Online’s Email a Believer – getting students to create the questions that they want answers to.

Whilst this is only a discussion of one part of the KS3 course there have been lessons learnt, most importantly that gimmicky schemes of work won’t get you anywhere. Be ambitious, set the bar high and give pupils the challenge of a rigorous curriculum.

This unit really upped the ante and the pupils really strove to meet that challenge and they thoroughly enjoyed learning about religions (something that I know many schemes of works and school RE departments try to shy away from through fear of leaving pupils disengaged).

Don’t forgot to start with what you want pupils to know at the end and then work forward from there. If you’re having a more ambitious overhaul of your curriculum then you really want to start from where you want pupils to end up long term (maybe even considering what you want them to know long after they have left school), think about what knowledge and skills they need to end up with and then work out how you can build them up to that. That first lesson in Y7 is setting them on the right trajectory, so don’t see it as an afterthought.

Please reach out with any questions (@MrMcKavanaghRE) on Twitter.