At St Catherine's, it is important that children and the school community play in integral role in assessing the effectiveness of our RE curriculum. The children's opinions and suggestions allow them to be involved in improving the effectiveness of provision for all. The children can confidently articulate the successes of their RE curriculum whilst also suggesting areas to further develop our curriculum and RE lessons. 

Have a look below to see some of the thoughts we've been sharing... 

What do you like learning about other people and their beliefs about life? 

* I like being able to understand different religions' beliefs about Gods. In Hinduism, they worship many different Gods and Goddesses and each one has something special about them. Brahman is the creator, Vishnu is the preserver and Sheva is the destroyer. We compared Brahman, Vishnu and Shiva to the the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. (Y4) 

* I enjoy learning about different religions’ celebrations. We have Christmas and Easter but other religions can have different celebrations. (Y6) 

 * I enjoy learning about similarities between different cultures and religions because you don’t always expect there to be similarities if they follow a different religion or live in a different country but there are often many. (Y5)

What kind of important questions do you ask in RE? 

‘If God made the world, why isn’t it perfect?’

‘What does freedom mean?’

‘What would God want to say to the human race?’

‘Do you show all of the Christian values to be a good person?’

‘What would you change to make the world perfect?’

‘Do you have to be a Christian to celebrate Christmas?’

We have been really focussing on asking, debating and discussing BIG QUESTIONS in our classes this year. Keep an eye out for some of the other questions we've been focussing on! 

How do you know what to do to improve your work? 

* Our teachers help us to make our work better in the lesson. When they mark our work, they write a question or give us words which we improve using a purple pen. (Y2)

* Our teachers ask us questions to get us thinking about how to make it better and they write questions in bubbles. Sometimes we get a checklist to check work ourselves. (Y3)

* Sometimes we will come back to the carpet and discuss if we need a bit more help. (Y4)

* We are able to use the bibles in RE to help us add more detail and quotations to our work. (Y6)

* We have word banks to help us know what to include in our work. (Y5) 

How often do you go on visits, use artefacts, stories or art to explore ideas in RE? 

* We visited church to see Ysmena and she taught us about the features of the church. David told us about light and why it's important. (Y2)

* We love watching videos of stories because it helps us to imagine and know what people look and sound like. (Y3 and Y4) 

* We used artefacts when we turned the classroom into a Gurdwara. We were able to taste their food and learn how they pray. You have to take your shoes off and wash your hands.  (Y3)

* We’ve done our own artwork to show our understanding of the trinity. (Y3 and Y4)

* We had Bhaktivedanta visit. We got dressed up and learnt about their God, Ganesh, who wears yellow for peace. We also had our faces painted. (Y4)

* We get to act out scenes from the bible or from other religious stories, to help us understand the way things are and put ourselves in other people’s positions. (Y5) 

* We created artistic lotus flowers with motivational quotes on because lotus flowers represent positivity and they bloom from the murky waters. (Y6) 

* We made our own illustrated crosses to represent our favourite bible story. (Y5) 

* We designed hands of Hamsa and chose whether we wanted them facing up to protect from negative energy or face down to bring good luck. (Y5) 

* We had a Passover seder meal. Before we could eat anything, we learnt about why it was carried out but then we went through step by step using the Haggadah just like Jewish people do. (Y5) 

* I liked being able to go to the Greek Orthodox church to be able to compare how it is different to St Mary’s church which we visited in the same week. (Y5) 

* I enjoyed being able to see the mosque, church and temple during multi-faith week because we could learn about the three different buildings and how they go about their days differently in each. (Y6)