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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

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

This September I am more aware than usual both of new beginnings and time passing. Although I have been in my school for almost two years, it has been mostly in lockdown. My experience of the school has not been in normal times, to say the least. When colleagues talk about a room, a person, a form to fill in, a process, an event, I am lost, it is like I started yesterday. I have existed in a bubble and now the bubble is burst.

Being back in the classroom, no longer confined to my metre box at the front, feels full of possibilities- students can work in groups and we can be more active in our learning, I can wander up to the back row or talk to a student quietly at their desk, rather than from the front of the room. Students can let off steam outside at break and lunch, no longer confined to their classrooms and bubbles. Being outside with all of year 7 and 8 as they tear around the playground feels surprisingly joyful, not how I would have described break duty before the pandemic.

I am also aware of changes closer to home. My daughter has started in Year 7. I have welcomed thousands of Year 7s in my almost 20 years in the classroom. Now I am finding out what goes on at home- making sense of the new systems, what books and kit are needed for each day, the pressures of homework. It is tiring and can be fraught if we are second-guessing a teacher’s instructions. But it is also exciting- a more independent young person is emerging, ready to take on these new challenges.

I have had the pleasure of working with Kathryn and the Culham St Gabriel’s team for some years. I am excited and privileged to take over stewardship of RE:ONLINE, building on the excellent work of my friend David Rees, who is much missed. RE:ONLINE brings together practical, classroom-focused guidance and resources, current research and information to keep you up to date. We will continue to offer high quality, practical and supportive material, whether for use in your classrooms or to adapt for another period of home learning. As always we welcome blogs from teachers or those working in and around religion and worldviews education. Email ideas you would like to share, however half-formed. We will develop them together.

We are developing an exciting online CPD platform for teachers- watch this space! The ‘In Conversation’ events which ran throughout two lockdowns will continue for the foreseeable future. These have been extremely beneficial in both communicating current research and thinking and allowing people to connect with others. It has been wonderful to see new faces at every session, perhaps people who would not usually join a face-to-face group for a variety of reasons. We look forward to welcoming new people to every event. These events and others like it have been an unexpected benefit of the pandemic.

As we look forward to a new term, some things feel really new- the mingling, mixing and moving feels at once rather scary and liberating. We are also looking back at almost two years of completely different working. We have learnt how to support each other in new ways, we have learnt to use Zoom (no mean feat), we have learnt how to carry on and how to change. Whatever is around the corner, we are looking forward to working with you. Have a great term!

The recent Ofsted Research Review has sparked much debate and discussion particularly on social media. The review sets out what it understands by a quality education in RE. In terms of the curriculum this is defined in terms of three types of knowledge:

• Substantive
• Ways of knowing
• Personal

One of the questions which struck me as I read the review, was how we theorise the relationship between these three types of knowledge. This is illuded to in the report (see Interplay of knowledge in the RE curriculum), but I felt I needed to think about it creatively. I like to think in pictures. So, what I offer here is an analogy. It is not perfect, but I hope it will help us to understand a little more about the interdependence of different types of knowledge.

Let us weave a knowledge tapestry….

The curriculum– this is like a developing tapestry. In theory it may have an ‘end point’ (i.e., end of formal education) but in my opinion it continues through our lifetime as we develop the three different types of knowledge.  Therefore, it might be described as an unfinished tapestry. This emphasises the flexible nature of curricula. Yet this fluidity still enables the tapestry or knowledge to build over time into a beautiful masterpiece….

Substantive Knowledge – this is the warp. These are the threads on the loom over and under which other threads are passed to make the tapestry. Without this there would be no tapestry! The warp is laid out at the beginning with a clear sense of what you are going to produce. There is some intent here. Choices must be made about how many threads, how wide the tapestry will be and so on. This is like the choices that must be made in relation to the substantive content. Ofsted talks about illustrative content that leads to an end goal.

Ways of Knowing or Disciplinary Knowledge – these are threads of the weft. They are woven in and out of the substantive content. This is important. Unless they are woven into the content, they will not contribute to the overall tapestry.  This means that as pupils’ journey through the substantive content they learn about and use a range of tools and methods such as interpretation, observation, analysing data and so on.

Personal Knowledge– these are also threads of the weft. They are also woven in and out of the substantive content. Our own positionality, our own worldview is woven into what it is we learn about. This means being self-aware, recognising and reflecting on how we relate to the ‘warp’ or content. This is a process of reflexivity.

So, now is the time to think about the tapestry you are creating, what choices will you make to build towards and create a masterpiece….

References:

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

I believe that a badly done lesson can be as bad as no lesson at all. In the classroom I’m larger than life, pitching myself to be at least 10% more enthusiastic about the day and learning than the students lollygagging towards my classroom are.

But how do you do this through a screen?

My solution was to create short, fun and fact-packed videos, which allow creativity to flow and smiles to follow. My issue with videos about religion is that they tend to be very serious about their content, which is fine and appropriate for some situations, but when trying to retain the attention of 14- and 15-year olds in the midst of a global pandemic, watching a 25 minute video with someone explaining the intricate details of the nature of God won’t hold students’ attention for long.

I don’t claim to have entirely solved this problem, as GCSE Religious Studies is very fact-heavy, but I reckoned that if I made some videos which are funny (at least to my mind!), clear and short, my students might just watch them to the end.

Because, what I’ve noticed is that my student’s enthusiasm for a topic is directly linked to my own. It does not equal it, rather they trail mine. If I am excited and curious about a topic, whatever it might be, they follow me down that path.

And the combined problems of lockdown, coronavirus-proof teaching, teenagers and social media is that information is filtered through a screen, which is easy to switch off or change what it is showing. Not to put too fine a point on it, but RE is always going to play second fiddle to English and Maths.

So I put on a fake beard and pretended to be an atheist. And I plotted out Peter’s denial of Christ using Lego stop-motion. Or I used my daughters’ farm-yard figures to demonstrate the parable of the sheep and the goats (she was upset that I didn’t ask her permission to do this). I have conducted conversations with myself, switching hats and costumes to denote a change of viewpoint (green hat with an Hawaiian shirt represents a liberal view, blue hat with a leather jacket for a more conservative view), and I have taken fruit from my son and given it to his toy dog (aka the Syrophoenician woman in Mark chapter 7).

For me, it was important to make sure they were fact-filled (so students could watch them and gain a basic understanding of the topic), short (so students would have a chance of watching it to the end) and funny (because life is too short to make boring videos!) My YouTube channel, RSin5orLess, will continue to act as a revision aid once ‘normal schooling’ returns, whenever that will be, as well as a reminder that necessity is the mother of invention. And that I’m bad at accents.

As a department, we have been trialling the use of knowledge quizzes with A level classes.  This blog will look to set out why we use them, how they are structured and the benefits we have found in their implementation.

Why we use knowledge quizzes with our A level students? 

Upon first glance at an RE A-level specification, the amount of content we need to cover in such little time is daunting.  Whilst we spend plenty of time considering how best to explore these ideas with our students, we felt that we had not spent enough time reflecting upon how best to assess the students’ understanding of the material we covered.

In previous years, we would have finished a unit of work by setting an essay question based on the topic.  However, we came to recognise that during the marking of essays, we would spend copious amounts of time dealing with knowledge errors within essays.  Whilst we would often use low stakes quizzes at the start of a lesson, we wanted to create a form of assessment at the end of the topic which would assess students’ understanding of the core knowledge within the unit before we proceeded to tackle an essay question.

How are they structured?

Here are the sections from a knowledge quiz set on the OCR topic of Ancient philosophical influences.  It would be the first knowledge test which Year 12 students would complete.  With future quizzes, each section may contain questions based upon a mix of topics.  This cumulative element would ensure that students are constantly revisiting prior material.

The quiz would start with asking students to define three key terms from the current topic.

Multiple-choice questions are a really useful tool in identifying any misconceptions students may have. When creating these multiple-choice questions, it is essential that they are rigorous and diagnostic.  These multiple-choice questions might be based on key terms, scholars or ideas students have explored in the topic.

These short recall questions allow students to elaborate further on core knowledge within the topic.

A longer explanation question allows students to demonstrate more in-depth understanding of core knowledge.

The final section of the quiz allows students to evaluate key ideas within the topic.  These points of evaluation are taken from the discussion points within the OCR A level specification for each topic.

As students to progress throughout the course, these knowledge quizzes could be expanded in various ways to assess core knowledge.  These include:

• Timelines to sort scholars into chronological order
• An extract from a philosophical or Biblical text which students have to summarise
• Providing a relevant quote to support a specific idea or scholar.

Here is one example taken from a knowledge quiz on the Developments in Christian Thought topic Death and the Afterlife:

In addition, as students progress throughout the course and we have taught essay writing knowledge quizzes can be used to assess their disciplinary knowledge in ways such as:

• Students selecting the best opening sentence for a paragraph in response to specific essay question
• Students selecting the grammatically correct sentence
• Asking students to highlight any structural errors within a paragraph

How are we using these knowledge quizzes?

We plan to use these knowledge quizzes at the end of each A-level unit prior to students completing an essay on the topic.  In addition, we have implemented them as part of our Year 12 mock exam.  In the past, the Year 12 Philosophy mock exam would have consisted of a choice of four essay questions with students answering three questions.  However, discussions with the rest of my department suggested that our traditional form of assessment for a mock exam may not be best for long term learning or provide us with a full picture of their knowledge of content covered prior to sitting the mock exam.

Firstly, students may have only completed a small amount of essay questions prior to this exam.  The task of completing three essay questions within timed conditions is something which they would not be suitably prepared for. Prior to them sitting the exam, we can already anticipate that some students may not complete all three questions within time allowed.  Secondly, this traditional form of assessment does not allow us to check the students’ understanding of the full breadth of A-level specification which they have covered prior to this exam.  Therefore, we included several knowledge quizzes within their mock exam as well as asking students to answer one essay question.

What are the benefits of using knowledge quizzes with A-level students?

From implementing knowledge quizzes within A-level teaching, we have seen various benefits for students and teachers:

• Quick to mark – usually 10/15 minutes per quiz
• Allows for assessment of more aspects of a specification than an essay question
• Allows students to check their understanding of a topic before preparing for an essay question
• Cumulative element allows students to constantly revisit prior material.

Over the last two terms I have been taking on the rather daunting task of re-writing a primary curriculum from Year 1 to Year 6. The aim of this new curriculum was to build something rigorous, knowledge-focused and exciting to not only prepare our students for secondary school, but to give them a good level of religious literacy for the rest of their lives. Although I am now a primary teacher, I trained, and until recently worked as, a secondary RE teacher.

One of the biggest shocks I have had in transferring to primary was a realisation of just how much KS1 and KS2 students are capable of. Never did I think I’d be able to cover Aquinas and Augustine with Year 4 or be able to properly consider Buddhist approaches to suffering with Year 6 or even to discuss the finer points of how prayers are answered with Year 1. This shock has given me the confidence needed to build a curriculum for our context that is ambitious in its content and hopefully this article will help you do the same. I’m going to introduce three key ways to help with that: reduce, reuse and recycle.

Reduce

It may seem counterintuitive but reducing how much you try to cover in your curriculum might be the key to making it rigorous. We spend all of KS1 just introducing the key concepts in Islam and Christianity. It lays the groundwork for an in-depth discussion of those two faiths in KS2 but also for introductions to other faiths with which they can draw comparisons. Similarly it is okay to reduce the amount of content you want to use in one lesson so you can work on just securing one concept or, perhaps even just taking the time to re-cap and re-embed material already taught.

Reuse

It is important then to be economical with the time we have to teach RE. By introducing key concepts early-on and re-capping them many times we are not only building a fluency in the subject but also saving time.

For example, I chose to introduce the idea of ‘faith’ very early on in Year 1 so that students understood the difference between observing a physical object and having belief in a deity. That concept then gets further embedded in Year 2 when we talk about the Bible and Qur’an and life of Muhammad, embedded even further in Year 3 talking about Judaism, Allah, and Christian prayer. By the time students get to Year 4 we can begin to test the concept out a bit more and create some fluency around it so we begin to talk about non-religious worldviews and how they view faith and then in Year 5 we talk about how faith can be tested by war so that in Year 6 we can even start to think about the ways in which faith is, or is not, always necessary in a religion.

Recycle

I, like every primary teacher I know, am a magpie when it comes to planning. We know how important effective explanations are to good teaching and, when it comes to planning RE for other teachers, we know that good pre-planned explanations can help cover gaps in subject knowledge. Therefore, when there is a tough concept I want to introduce, I reach for the stack of books by my desk and see how other writers have introduced this concept then I recycle it. I will think about how they explain things and adapt it for the age group and previous knowledge of those it will be taught to. You can find my recommendations for good subject knowledge boosters here.

What part does religion play in shaping the world? How is religion shaped back by the world, in turn? And now, in the Covid-19 world, are the answers different? The first two are essential Religion and Worldviews (R&W) questions, the third promises perspective shifts. The pandemic is changing us all, thus generating new R&W content. That much is clear from the London School of Economics (LSE) Religion and Global Society interdisciplinary blog, an excellent resource.[i]

The LSE blog is a changing collection of articles, often research summaries, as with Grace Davie’s and Nancy Ammerman’s piece on whether religion inhibits or generates social progress. [ii] Among Davie’s and Ammerman’s key findings are these (we recommend reading the entire article, and provide only some of the main points here):

• “Religion is a lived, situated and constantly changing reality, and has as much to do with navigating everyday life as it does with the supernatural.”
• Therefore, we have to look at contexts and examples, closely.
• (Researchers) . . . “will benefit from careful attention to the power of religious ideas to motivate, of religious practices to shape ways of life, of religious communities to mobilize and extend the reach of social changes, and of religious leaders and symbols to legitimate calls to action”

I would say that the advice for researchers is equally good advice for teachers. All of the points would apply whether or not we were under a pandemic, but the pandemic now gives a distinctive context and, in that context, particularised examples of religious motivation and mobilisation. The Covid-19 section of the LSE blog covers some such examples. [iii]

Firstly, Michal Kravel-Tovi and Esra Özyürek discuss religious and other gatherings in the age of coronavirus. [iv] Their analysis is provocative and unsettling:

• They argue that a religious gathering is more likely than a secular one to be identified as a virus cluster, as part of a discourse of suspicion against foreigners or minorities.
• They show how religiously-based defiance can often be typed as outrageous and irresponsible, as opposed to the less-than-perfect-citizenship of ‘secular’ gatherings such as a beach party.
• They see all of this as a clash between different understandings of reality, and a pretext for increasing state control of religious groups.

We might not agree with the views in this article; nevertheless, as we will see later, it offers useful classroom teaching points and resources. So does Marina Sapritsky-Nahum, who draws a fascinating account of this year’s Passover from her research in London’s Jewish communities: [v]

• She writes that “Next Year Together” may replace “Next Year in Jerusalem”, as the phrase of hope that concludes the celebration.
• She reports how for some Jews, social distancing goes against everything Judaism stands for and undermines their biggest strength: standing together as a community
• For a number of young Jewish families, she says, isolation has, however, created greater connection with their own nuclear family, bringing Jewish teachings and history to life in the comfort of their homes.
• It is still a difficult setting in which to celebrate liberation – you cannot celebrate with the extended family or invite strangers, as is customary. But projects such as Seder-to-Go provide all of the essential elements while spreading the message “Freedom is not limited to where you are.” [vi]
• 4,000 plus Seder boxes have been delivered across the UK, to many who are unable to source the necessary food for the holiday, or who need a step-by-step guide

Marina Sapritsky-Nahum concludes that in today’s global yet isolated world, traditions are not just handed down but also made. Recently I have heard two colleagues speaking about a natural role for R&W in offering young people a space to discuss the existential disruptions of the pandemic. I prefer Marina Sapritsky-Nahum’s focus, because whilst we should contribute to dealing with what is controversial or difficult, the responsibility to do so is not ours alone. Different curriculum areas have different contributions to make. Our distinctive contribution is to educate on the religion and worldviews aspects of Covid-19, as signposted by the articles summarised above, heeding the advice of Grace Davie and Nancy Ammerman to pay close attention to the specifics of context, example, motivation and mobilisation.

Michal Kravel-Tovi and Esra Özyürek provide a whole series of links to images and reports of different gatherings, religious and other. Teachers could use these with pupils, who could be tasked to identify and describe the different views of the world that these images and reports illustrate. Pupils could then be asked to juxtapose pairs of images that illustrate worldview differences, note the tensions that may result and suggest ways to manage these. How, for example, should a discussion proceed between the Louisiana pastor who hosted hundreds on Palm Sunday and the Anglican vicar who broadcast the Maundy Thursday service from her home? In a different learning task, pupils could consider the single images of empty places of worship. They could talk and write about why physical gatherings at sacred places are significant to people. Why do they think it is it important to join voices in shared speech and song, to physically take the Eucharist, or to adopt the prayer positions in synchrony with others? Opportunities for pupils to research now arise: what do members of different communities say about this? There are questions, too, about how societal developments challenge and reposition those communities’ self-understanding and practices.

Marina Sapritsky-Nahum’s stories provide excellent material for extending the enquiry. Teachers could present these to pupils, then providing a summary handout for annotation: when Passover took place under lockdown, what was lost, and what was gained? Feedback from the task could build into wider discussion: what do the gains experienced during Passover under lockdown tell us about how all communities can become stronger in the future?

[i] The blog’s home page is https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/about/

[ii] Grace Davie and Nancy Ammerman, ‘A lived, situated and constantly changing reality’: Why religion is relevant to the pursuit of social progress,’ online article available at
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2019/01/a-lived-situated-and-constantly-changing-reality-why-religion-is-relevant-to-the-pursuit-of-social-progress/ downloaded on 11 May 2020.

[iii] The section is at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/category/covid-19/ and has twelve widely varied case studies at the time of writing. Again, I have space for only a couple here.

[iv] Michal Kravel-Tovi and Esra Özyürek, ‘Contagious Crowds: Religious Gatherings in the Age of Coronavirus,’ online article available at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2020/05/contagious-crowds-religious-gatherings-in-the-age-of-coronavirus/ downloaded on 19 May 2020.

[v] Marina Sapritsky-Nahum, ‘ ‘This Night is Different From All Others’: Passover in London and Celebrating Liberation in Isolation,’ online article available at https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/religionglobalsociety/2020/04/this-night-is-different-from-all-others-passover-in-london-and-celebrating-liberation-in-isolation/ downloaded on 19 May 2020. The article also gives a general introduction to Passover.

[vi] See https://www.thejc.com/community/community-news/deliveroo-to-deliver-chabad-coronavirus-seder-to-go-kits-to-the-isolated-1.498818 .

Working in a Church of England High School affords me the luxury of RE being a core subject and is therefore held with high esteem. SLT, governors, students and parents see the value in what we do and what we are trying to achieve with our young people. GCSE is compulsory and our results are slightly above national average.  Everything was going swimmingly…………. until the 18th March 2020 when the announcement was made that schools would be closing their doors to the majority of students. From the following Monday we would enter an unknown world of virtual teaching. But that’s fine!  We can all use computers, can’t we?  We can all carry on with our schemes of work and tweak them for home learning, can’t we?  My expectations were high.  I know my students and I know what they are capable of. The work was set and the days until ‘hand in’ were counting down.

Then came the reality. The students were clearly taking time to adjust to home learning.  A different way of learning, reading instructions via an online platform, guiding themselves through carefully constructed resources, downloading attachments that has challenged us, but without their teacher in the same room for reassurance.

I am immensely proud of my students and how hard they work. So, when the work that appeared in my inbox varied in quality, I had to remain reflective and ask questions of myself and my team as to why this might be the case. Well, the usual high standard of work was caught up in the minds of confused, scared and unsettled young people who were trying to find their feet in a world that had been turned upside down!

Laptops on knees, dining room tables, desks in bedrooms, living room side tables. Some working during school hours and others not until they can get a slot on the shared computer at home or after their younger siblings have gone to bed because they have been helping to care for them. The circumstances that our students are working in are so varied and, in some cases, complex. We needed to factor that in.

So, a rapid change in mind set from me and let’s see what happens. Gone are the requirements to complete every section of the PowerPoint that has been set and ‘proof’ being sent to me and welcome to quick wins. The PowerPoint is still shared and a hope that students will find the time to work through it. A differentiated approach works better, with extensions there for the more able and more scaffolded tasks for lower ability groups. Online spelling tests, quizzes and reflections on their current experience are a win.   Something changed overnight. Notification after notification!! The work was actually flooding in after all.  The online self-marking tasks also hinted to me about who had really engaged with the lesson and who had maybe gone straight for the quiz. But I can now record that and make sure that I cover those areas that seem to have received lower scores when we return to school.

I may have adapted my expectations during home learning but, in doing so, student participation has drastically increased. They are engaging much more readily and are doing more than required of them too.  In addition to the spelling test or quiz or whatever is it, they are also sending me pictures of their work that they are proud of………and I’m proud too!

Lockdown is tough, but so are we!