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I took over the RE provision at Foxdell Infants School about 5 years ago. We already had our Bronze Award. I wanted to take RE to another level and create memories that the children would cherish. I felt that we had speakers who attended our school but it was difficult for our students to fully engage. I wanted to create a more interactive approach whereby the children could be more involved.

I organised Art workshops in conjunction with the church to enable parents to work with their children using a common theme. The subject was ‘light’, we organised art and craft activities which included all the religions. The workshop was very well received with excellent feedback.

During Diwali I organised stick dancing; this enabled the children to join in with the festivities. We also have our very own Holi festival which the children look forward to every year. It’s one time in the year that they can really run loose and enjoy the freedom of paint throwing. Every year lessons are learnt on how we can improve. The children particularly like to join in with the Bollywood dancing.

We also try to work alongside charities, our school recently worked with Ummah Trust and made charity boxes for the less privileged.  We raised £1000! The children all received prizes which further motivated them.

We have worked with Crisis Aid and invited back our visitors who shared a video of where the aid went and showed the children receiving the gifts. The parents were also invited for this and were happy to see where their kind donations had gone.

We try to set competition and home-work projects for parents and children to work on together. We have set faith card competitions, Easter Bonnet competitions and ‘paint and decorate your own Diva’ competitions.

Children at Foxdell have also painted a canvas showing a Mosque for the Discover Islam Centre. This is displayed at their centre.

We also invite speakers to host assemblies, quizzes, and religious talks where children are given the opportunity to ask questions.

We have organised trips into the community where children have visited Luton Foodbank and a residential home for the elderly. Children were able to demonstrate their values and help make a food box and delivery hampers to the elderly as well as listen to their childhood stories.

Our Christingle service is also a very big event which the children love to participate in. The service is lovely and brings the school together. We also have a nativity for the reception children who look beautiful in their shiny costumes.

We had decided to renew our Bronze Award but as we were getting assessed we qualified for Silver with elements of Gold!

The children were the reason we achieved this, as they were very passionate about the RE in our school. It has been embedded in them so they could talk about what we do and what they learn. In our school RE is reflected in the classrooms, in the corridor, through pupil’s voice and through our planning. We try to plan creatively ensuring all pupils are motivated by this fascinating subject. I am hoping to continue this work and continue supporting staff to deliver exciting lessons!

My advice to anyone thinking of going for the REQM is make it exciting, create a buzz and capture the pupils voice, do not give away the RE lessons to staff covering your lessons, teach them yourself! RE lessons can be perfect in enabling you to truly understand the children you work with as this is the time they can share their personal experiences. This is the time you can hear their voice, this is the time you are one step closer to achieving your Quality Mark!

The aim of the Farmington Institute (part of Harris Manchester College, Oxford University), is to support and encourage teachers of Religious Education in schools. This can be in either primary or secondary settings or other centres offering RE teaching including places of worship, and often encompasses being released for a fixed period of time to research a specific area pertinent to RE, be it literacy, teaching of a specific religion or something a bit more unique.

We, as a collective, became one of the first group scholarships, with the brief to provide support to secondary RE teachers in Suffolk.

If you asked somebody to name something about Suffolk, my guess is that most think of Ed Sheeran. They will have heard of John Constable. Some might think of the Adnams or Greene King breweries or Aspall’s cider. They might mention Ipswich Town Football Club (they’ll look unhappy if they do), or they may talk about our beautiful coastline. My guess is that they might not know that the honeycomb in the centre of a Malteser is made in Suffolk, or that we are home to an endangered species – the Suffolk Punch horse.

But I can almost guarantee that they will not think of multiculturalism, or a large amount of different beliefs and worldviews being prevalent. And they would be right.

Of a population of around 750,000 people, 61% of those claim to be Christian according to the latest census. The closest belief next to that are the ‘nones’ at 30%, with each of the other major belief systems all being in the 0 point something percent. While the increasing rise of the ‘nones’ reflects UK society in general, for each of the other beliefs, Suffolk lags behind with every other belief in the country. Resultantly, many students in Suffolk are less exposed to the diversity of beliefs in the UK and, we would argue, this makes RE even more crucial in their development as citizens of our country.

And yet, RE has found itself increasingly on the margins; squeezed into PSHE schemes, given a couple of cursory drop-down days every now and again, or just purely forgotten about. And, for those schools that do commit to it, do see the benefit in it and fulfil their obligations to their students, RE teachers are often left to fend for themselves, largely in single-staffed departments. Energetic and talented NQTs often find themselves leading subjects in their first year in the job, even having to create the programmes of study on the fly. RE departments are often led by well-meaning, non-specialists crying out for a bit of guidance and no knowing where to turn for it.

And then there are the practical Suffolk issues: how can I get my students used to different places and ways or worshipping when the closest Synagogue or Mandir is 90 minutes away? Can I afford the time to drive 60 minutes for a network meeting to then drive 60 minutes back home again? How can I keep up to date with new resources and ideas to keep RE interesting? Who do I turn to when I need some support and advice?

These were the questions that the four of us were hearing through our roles as Professional Advisors to Suffolk SACRE, where we update local faith representatives and politicians about developments in RE, both nationally and locally, providing us with a clear insight into the status of RE in the county. Thanks to some clear guidance and support from passionate people such as Jan Maguire and Helen Matter on SACRE, as well as those at Farmington, Suffolk Resolve was created. All of us are subject leaders (as well as, somewhat typically for RE teachers, having other roles in our schools), but most importantly, we all care deeply about RE being done and done well.

There have been a number of outcomes from the project. Firstly, we were able to offer teachers the chance to go on an organised trip to Coventry, to look at two places of religious significance; Coventry Cathedral and the Sikh Gurdwara. This was done to show that it is possible to expose our students to wider religious beliefs and practices, as well as providing valuable CPD for teachers.

Secondly, we made ourselves available for coaching and mentoring across the county (and a little bit beyond the borders too!), especially for those aforementioned who might not have much subject specific support. The intention is that this is ongoing. One colleague who benefited from the coaching said that it was particularly beneficial to have “a subject specialist observing me for a day, giving feedback, suggestions for improvement and sharing expertise and experience. To have an experienced practitioner as a go-to, at any time has been exceptionally useful.”

Finally, our website (www.suffolkresolve.co.uk) was created to host our project and share our learning. On the website, we have made the latest research and developments in RE easily accessible in a single location, so that we can keep improving our practice in order to benefit those we teach. This includes articles, podcasts and signposting to various RE influences, including RE:ONLINE. The website also hosts a plethora of resources developed by one member of our team, with ideas based on requests from local teachers as well as looking to cover the range of specifications, topics taught and worldviews that our students should encounter. These will remain available and we hope you find them useful too.

We are yet to see the full impact of our project, but many have stated a greater confidence, a greater feeling of support and a sense of relief that there are people there to help, and who want to help. They now know that they are not on their own. This is something that we have all felt when working on the project together – the benefits of talking to each other regularly about what we are doing and why, either in person or online has made us all better teachers; as the saying goes ‘iron sharpens iron’. Despite our geographical distance and various contexts, we have felt that we are a team who have experienced each other’s struggles and successes and it has become more and more apparent that too many RE teachers feel like individuals out there in the wilderness and we want to be a part of the solution to these issues.

Teaching is a team game and this is most certainly true for RE, so we believe that we should be treating it more like that and we will be endeavouring to continue to play our part. For us, there is more and more evidence that as experienced professionals, we need to share. Share resources. Share experiences. Share ideas. Share our struggles and share our successes. So we will keep sharing, and hopefully play our small part in making this great subject a little bit better.

Find out more about us at www.suffolkresolve.co.uk

Martin Cobbold, Debenham High School

Sarah Cobbold, St Benedict’s High School

Wayne Buisst, Ormiston Denes Academy

David Yaroslaw, Debenham High School

For more information about Farmington scholarships, visit http://www.farmington.ac.uk

As the alarm sounds at 4am, through the fog, my mind clocks that today’s the day for the AREIAC conference.  It was hard to get away from class even for one day – which was all I was going to manage – not because of SLT but because of my class. Year 6 can be a volatile place at this time of year, which has meant I haven’t had chance to think about leading and supporting RE teaching for some time.  I was excited, curious and hopeful.

The conference was entitled Agents of Change.  As I sat on the train, I wondered how it was going to change me.

The first keynote speaker was Mary Myatt.  Her focus on the use of stories hit a nerve.  Two years ago, I re-evaluated and redesigned our school’s English planning.  I was worried that children had lost their love of English (or perhaps they’d never found one).  I wanted to inspire children (well I’m a teacher, it’s what we do) so I started with stories.  I know that seems an obvious thing for English but I mean really good, vocabulary rich stories.  Stories that took a term to read and became the springboard for their creativity.  Since then, our reading and writing scores have rocketed.  Children have a love of reading.

Mary talked about starting with stories, really rich, meaningful engaging stories in RE.  Of course!  Why would it only be English?  I have been striving for a way of raising children’s religious literacy – particularly in community Primaries where children have barely any.  They have no way of connecting RE to their lives, no foundation of religious vocabulary to build upon and deepen.  We needed a way in and there is nothing more profound in teaching than a story.  It is in our human nature.  Beyond culture and throughout time, stories have been used to connect, inform, engage, and inspire!  So, my first change?  Every piece of planning to include a story.  And right there – English and RE making a genuine connection where both subjects can be taught simultaneously without compromising the key skills of either.

After lunch, Luke Donnellan spoke about Humanism and World Views.  He began with the stats.  A strong case in themselves to teach non-religious world views, but along with others I was worried about just ticking the ‘no religion’ box as evidence for those who have ‘non-religious world views’.  As though reading our minds, he went on to clarify what exactly was meant by ‘non-religious world views’: that this did not, in itself, mean atheism, nihilism or ‘no religion’.  For the Primary curriculum, ‘non-religious world views’ is new to many teachers.  Indeed it’s only really touched upon in Year 6 if at all.  I have often seen humanism mixed with atheism and a lack of understanding of the ‘world view’ part of this.  So my next change?  Clarifying what is meant by ‘non-religious world views’ to my primary colleagues and removing the misunderstanding.

My time at the conference was brief, but it only took a whistle-stop tour for me to be inspired by the vision, commitment and drive to see the changes I need to make to ensure that the teaching and learning in Religious Education and World Views is accessible, rigorous and of course inspirational for all children!

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.

REvitalise was a one-year project funded by AREIAC and CStG, it supported 20 teachers already starting to lead RE training for others outside of their school.

Having had the privilege to be part of the REvitalise project has enabled me to have a far better understanding of how to improve RE provision within my own school, as well as for others, allowing me to grow as well as help develop the leadership qualities in others.

Every minute of my involvement with this project has been extremely useful, as I have been immersed in high quality CPD with the best people and have been given amazing opportunities to meet other organisations such the 3 Faith Forum and The Ismaili Centre in London. It was useful to find out more about these organisations so that I could impart my new-found knowledge with my RE leaders’ group. I found out about the Faith and Belief Forum’s diversity workshops and their school linking programme: I have since shared this information with other RE leaders in Frimley. The visit to the Ismaili Centre was a fantastic opportunity to find out more first-hand about a branch of Islam that I didn’t previously know much about. This subject knowledge has since been used to inform my own planning and that of other leaders’. Being part of this program has allowed me to have a year’s membership to AREIAC- a fantastic opportunity to meet and work with advisers and consultants- learning from highly experienced people in the field of RE!

One of the best things I have learnt, which has had a huge impact on my training of other teachers, was learning about andragogy. It answers the ‘So what?’ and ‘Why should I be interested?’ questions that many teachers ask when involved with CPD at the end of a day’s teaching. The power of effective andragogy is vital in order to give teachers worthwhile ideas for the classroom and a wealth of resources to take away. I now use a variety of practical and engaging ‘starters’ at the beginning of my training sessions which make teachers think deeply about the content of the training- compared to ‘jumping into’ the training content that I used to do. I feel that I now conduct useful, interesting and highly relevant CPD for all- I now look at what I do with ‘a fresh pair of eyes’!

Attending the AREIAC conference in Manchester this July seemed like a natural progression as I come to the end of my year on the REvitalise project. It was evident that within the RE community, it is vital to make connections between organisations, supporting each other and helping to grow new leaders for the future- in essence just what the REvitalise project has aimed to achieve.

It was an honour to hear the wise words of the high calibre of speakers at the AREIAC conference. Mary Myatt’s words about ‘High Challenge, Low Threat’ made me think about offering a training session for the RE planners in my school and within my trust, based on examining closely, the quality of lessons being offered to pupils. During Mary’s speech, I found myself questioning myself about the quality of texts and images being used in my own classroom. Ed Pawson gave a brilliant speech which made me think about how the CORE report translates into what we do next as an RE community. Ed’s speech also highlighted the need for preparing training for teachers of RE to prepare for ‘deep dive’ inspections. This is something I hope to do in the next academic year. It was a fantastic experience to hear about Dr Richard Kueh’s multi-disciplinary approach to stressing the importance for subjects to be more linked. I now understand more about finding a strategic way to improve the standards in my trust and to influence change with respect to RE planning and ultimately, the quality and content of what pupils are learning. Dr Kevin O’Grady made me think about research opportunities: consequently, I would like to ask my local group members if they would like to research any area of our subject, with a view to sending a research proposal to Kevin in the future. To summarise, all speakers made me think clearly about curriculum design and how my leadership can be used to help develop the quality of the subject for others. I am particularly interested in looking at previous research with a view to how it can inform my planning and teaching of RE, which in turn, will be of benefit to the teachers I train.

REvitalise has also given me the opportunity to network with others in similar roles.  I now feel empowered to ’push further’ and work with other advisers to coordinate a pupil conference for higher prior attainers in RE, with a view to providing a conference for RE teachers in Surrey. Without this incredible project, I would never have broken out of my ‘comfort zone’.  Now I have the courage to keep striving for excellence in RE on a much larger scale and taking others with me on this journey. I am so grateful for being part of the REvitalise project- I will never look back!

For more about research in RE visit Research

Teachers and educationalists have taken part in two incredible days exploring Theologies of Reading at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge.

Why describe it as incredible?

The level of expertise in the room from primary and secondary teachers, RE advisors and educationalists complimented an inspiring series of lectures and discussions on aspects of RE.  Lectures came from post-doctoral experts in their fields of study providing a  ‘deep dive’ and nourishment into elements of RE as well as careful thought on how the themes could be transferred into different education settings.

In the course of Theologies of Reading Day One Hermeneutics, Qur’anic Recitation, Religious Commentaries in Midrash and Biblical Language in texts were explored.  These challenging concepts were enlightening, particularly with expectation of translating them into my own context of primary education.  The key to doing this for me was to breakdown each lecture into simple terms; Hermeneutics crudely became different viewpoints, Biblical Language and Texts became authorship and Religious Commentaries became evidence-based argument.

I then selected two of these concepts to develop into a teaching block from the Understanding Christianity resource – The Kingdom of God.  It linked to the liturgical calendar as Pentecost was upon us, this allowing me to explore the story of Pentecost through authorship and biblical evidence.  A great find to enable this was the purchase of an Infographic Bible!

The second element allowed me to explore the theological impact of Pentecost on the beliefs of Christians in the context of The Kingdom of God.  Healthy debates were held on the reasonableness of Jesus ascending to heaven and whether people did actually experience the Holy Spirit within them.  At times this digressed into wider discussions about the origins of the universe and the nature of the miraculous.  Year 6 pupils raised the idea that for the big bang to happen someone needed to create the space for it to happen – was that proof of God?  This obviously made for more thought as a couple of days later when a Year 3 child asked if God created everything then who created God?  Another child made the connection that maybe we could interpret the big bang as the creation of God – were they one and the same?

Day Two of the Theologies of Reading seminars allowed us to showcase our work and to explore some further concepts back in Cambridge. As part of this day we visited the university library and explored some of the treasures of the sacred texts that they hold.  It was a genuine privilege to ‘get up close’ to text dating back in some cases over 500 years.  To see personal notations and additions in pontificals as well as the evolution of script into scholastic ‘textbooks’ was amazing.  I was particularly inspired by the intimacy of the Book of Hours we saw.  I pondered how these very personal collections of bible verse, prayers and psalms could be translated into an assessment piece for Year 6 as a culmination of their total RE learning.

This visit was complimented by a lecture on Practical Criticism and coming to a text with purity, no context and experiencing it as a reader.  We read collectively as a group, discussed our stumbles and our cohesion.  Brought light to the semantics of the verse and offered our reflections.

So what next?

Taking the concept of reading a text ‘cold’ not only for RE but also across the wider curriculum may be a possibility.  Likewise transferring and connecting the skills of RE across the curriculum.  A fellow colleague posed the idea of what if you presented a religious text in a format that removed the ‘religiousness’; a bible text without the verses or chapters or a psalm presented as a simple poem.  Would the children interact differently to it?  Would it be better?  Some exciting ideas to explore…

For further information about the Theologies of Reading series contact Kathryn Wright  ceo@cstg.org.uk

Details of the original Theologies of Reading seminars which inspired this CSDP programme can be found here: http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/programmes/theologies-of-reading

For information about the Understanding Christianity resource: http://www.understandingchristianity.org.uk

For information about University of Cambridge Treasures collection: https://www.50treasures.divinity.cam.ac.uk

At every conference I attend, you will find me with a neat notebook and pen poised to take down as many ideas as I possibly can from the sessions I select. I find it useful afterwards to go through and highlight the key ideas that will stay with me either for immediate use or for me to think about more and maybe even read up on! This year’s AULRE was no different and with 18 pages of notes I thought I would try to distil some of it here:

• We need to teach the pupils about people. Pupils are also people.

This came from Joyce Miller’s opening keynote. She was talking about avoiding the use of the easy label in RE. Let’s stop talking about people being Christians or Muslims, Sikhs or Hindus and so on. People of faith have jobs, families, hobbies, communities, wider interests…..and so do our pupils. Let’s recognise that people are more than a label. We need to avoid our pupils feeling that they are not a part of the RE landscape. Avoid the disconnection they can feel and make them see that just like, for example, Christians, they have a view on matters in RE too.

• We teach children, not just RE.

This theme was one that came up in papers by Julian Stern, Elizabeth Russell and Pat Hannam. RE isn’t just about teaching our subject and for many of us, it is not the primary focus. Teaching has an ethical aspect and we want to positively impact on the lives of the young people in front of us. We need to care about them. Our key motivation for teaching may vary but the day to day is always about children.

• Collaborating with others leads to impactful innovation.

This came from a paper by Frances Lane about a module for her NQTs. By insisting they work in small RE teams and clearly identifying a joint project, they were encouraged to support, problem solve and innovate their way through their NQT year. I bet they had fun doing it too!

• Stop using the word ‘explore’.

As a learning objective that is. We don’t often head out to explore anywhere in RE! Thanks to Nigel Fancourt, Liam Guilfoyle and Jessica Chan for reminding me of this. There must be better verbs for what we are doing in class?

• Brainwashing might work, and be quick, but it is not what we want to do.

Dave Aldridge also gave us an introduction to time travel (yes, really!) but it was this point about brainwashing that I found most striking. Yes, we could, but we don’t. The kind of knowledge that could be imparted this way is probably not the kind of thing we want to teach.

Last week I attended the AULRE 2019 conference in Birmingham. AULRE is an association of members interested in learning, teaching and research in religion and education. This year around 70 delegates attended, this included university lecturers, PGCE tutors, advisers, consultants and teachers.

Not surprisingly, responses to and critique of the Commission on RE (2018) report flavoured many of the keynotes and papers presented. Joyce Miller stressed the importance of the inclusive nature of the report which she argued comprehensively presents a vision for all. She made a case for understanding the socio-political context of RE, re-examining the content of the subject through overarching conceptual categories and embracing the term ‘worldview’ as a way of providing meaning to the subject for all. She hinted at ways in which a Buddhist worldview might be explored through the vision of the Commission. I found this inspiring and hope Joyce will go on to consider other ways in which the Commission’s vision may become a reality. This has the potential to transform curriculum design in our subject and impact on classroom practice.

I attended a number of parallel papers, and one common theme running through them was the importance of the teacher’s context, career journey and own worldview when considering how they understand the subject of RE. For example, one researcher talked about how teacher’s understanding of the subject might be more relational or more subject focussed. Some teachers may have a stronger sense of vocation, some are influenced by policy change, but others are not. Professional learning was regarded as important in terms of implementing policy changes. If teachers do not engage with professional learning the research found that teachers were not aligned to policy changes and would often continue as before. There is a huge overlap between subject construction and the identity of the teacher. This provides some important questions for policy makers who want to bring about change. For example, it shows the importance of professional learning when a new agreed syllabus is introduced or when new approaches to teaching and learning are advocated such as the RE:searchers project or a resource like Understanding Christianity. In addition, if the recommendations from the Commission are to be taken forward, it shows how important the engagement of teachers is in this process.

One piece of research suggested that an understanding of the aims of RE is rarely static for a teacher. One important point made was that teachers are influenced by socio-cultural factors as well as ontological (beliefs about the subject) and epistemological (knowledge of the subject) ones. When beginner teachers embark on their careers the epistemological factors are very strong as they learn about the subject, but as they progress through their career the socio-cultural factors often become much stronger. In fact, it was argued that sometimes the epistemological factors have no bearing on the teacher at all once they are an established teacher unless they engage with research. This raised some important questions for me about the importance of interaction between researchers and teachers and the value of action research especially during times of change.

References:

Keynote: Dr Joyce Miller: Religion and worldviews- the way forward?

Parallel Paper given by Dr Elizabeth Russell

Parallel Paper given by Alexis Stones

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.