Our vision is theologically rooted in John 10:10, aiming to prepare all children to 'live life in all its fullness'. We recognise all pupils as unique; made in God's image. Our high aspirations for pupils enable them to foster a love of learning and opportunities to develop God given talents. Our broad curriculum equips pupils with skills and knowledge for their next steps. This includes overcoming challenges, making good choices, keeping safe, happy and healthy whilst seeing themselves as change makers. Promotion of self-belief, potential barrier removal and ensuring equity of opportunity is paramount to 'living life in all its fullness'.

Intent

At The Canons CE Primary School, we strongly believe that RE is of extreme importance in helping children learn about the foundations of our vision and values that underpin all aspect of our church school life. These values are woven through all areas of our RE curriculum and all other subject areas. Religious education is a statutory subject for all pupils, as it is necessary part of a broad and balanced curriculum. It is taught for 60-75 minutes weekly in line with the statutory requirement.

Implementation

Our curriculum design integrates aspects of the Coventry and Warwickshire agreed syllabus (SACRE) and Understanding Christianity. Our unique context is very important to us and we are proud to interweave aspects of our rich local history into our learning. Our status as an ICONS school also influences our curriculum design. Please visit the hyperlink at the bottom of the page to find out more.

We cover objectives set out in the local syllabus produced by Coventry and Warwickshire Local Authorities (SACRE). This is supported by the scheme of Understanding Christianity. Our Christianity lessons have a theological core which encourages children to explore, reflect upon and respectfully question biblical teachings.  Each Understanding Christianity unit follows a Biblical or theological theme. The spiral curriculum for Christianity follows the core concepts of: God, Creation, Fall, People of God, Incarnation, Gospel, Salvation and Kingdom of God. It also allows the children to understand the impact of the text upon adherents and to make connections to their own experiences and to the beliefs of others around the world. In this way children are also encouraged to use philosophical thinking as well as creating and developing their own personal world view applying the lens of human and social science to viewing how modern Christians live their lives. 

The SACRE units enable children to engage with other religious and non-religious world views and beliefs.  Lessons provide opportunities for children to explore where beliefs may have come from, how they may have changed over time and to explore the diversity of expression of adherents. They follow 7 core concepts;

Each sequence of learning allows children to study in a variety of ways, including using: Holy or Sacred scriptures, artefacts, visits and visitors, artwork, audio and visual resources.

Impact

We firmly believe that our RE curriculum enables our pupils to gain a deep awareness of their own and others unique identities as they explore ‘Big Questions’ that are presented through Christianity and by a wide variety of other world religions. We also strongly believe that RE is of great importance in helping children understand what is of real value in our world today. Through RE children can become literate and articulate about religion and beliefs in order to become caring, respectful members of society. This subject strongly encourages the pupils to be curious about faith and recognise how it can impact the lives of individuals, communities, society and culture. Through their work in RE, children continuously reflect on their own beliefs and values in light of their learning and by doing so, demonstrate respect for themselves and others. We believe that this will equip our children to contribute towards a better world for all and to Live Life in all it’s fullness.

Assessment

Assessment for learning strategies including retrieval questioning enable teachers to identify the strength of understanding of the children. Adaptations to subsequent planning will follow suit to meet the needs of all children and end of unit summative assessments are completed. Following this progressive curriculum ensures the children become reflective and respectful citizens who will have had the opportunity to be introduced to religious and non-religious world views as well as time to develop their own sense of belief and belonging. 

Christian Values are also intertwined through our curriculum and are demonstrated in the day to day behaviours of our pupils. These values play a large role during our collective worship sessions also and how we establish these positive behaviours across all of our school.

We have a motto of ‘Respect-Believe-Achieve’ which embeds how we would like our pupils to live:

Respect- Have respect for people and property

Believe – Have belief in yourself and develop your own personal beliefs

Achieve – Achieve success in many areas of life and celebrate achievements together

We work hard together to ensure that all people in our school community feel equipped and able to ‘Live life in its fullness’ through our simple vision, values and motto.

Courageous Advocacy is also something that we encourage in our pupils. We encourage them to make change in lots of ways. Please see our weekly newsletters for examples of pupil lead fundraising projects.

Please see iSing Pop perform an inspirational ‘World Changer’ song. We enjoyed attending and joining in with this at the Alive! Festival 2023. If you listen very carefully you might hear some Canons Pupils singing proudly!

iSing Pop ‘World Changer’ Song

An extract from our recent SIAMS report about the quality of our RE teaching and learning at The Canons:

"The quality of RE is high at the Canons school. Generous curriculum time is allowed to enable imaginative teaching and learning that links well with other subjects. Well planned and sequenced units of learning allow strong knowledge to grow and skills to develop. Ambitious lessons challenge pupils to think deeply and appreciate what belief means to them. Excellent leadership provides support for teachers and frequent training creates confidence. This reflects the heart of the school vision in action. Links with the Diocese of Coventry help strengthen provision and staff are tireless in looking for inspirational content and teaching experiences. Pupils openly share how much they enjoy RE lessons. They appreciate how the subject enables them to learn how to live well with others. The frequent use of reflection in learning through 'pondering questions' ensures pupils engage fully with topics and can confidently express opinions and beliefs. Lesson discussion is recorded expertly by staff who value all comments and ideas. Quality learning opportunities through visits to local churches and two cathedrals provide valuable first-hand experience. Visitors from different faith communities strengthen knowledge and respect for diverse beliefs. This prepares pupils for life in their wider community."

Some recent pupil voice about our RE learning (Gathered form lower KS2 pupils in Autumn 1 2024): 

How does RE help you in your life?

Year 3 pupil; "It helps us to know how to solve problems, we can think about what Jesus might have done in his life and try to do the same."

Year 4 pupil; "It is exciting to learn about Jesus and helps us to know that we are not alone during hard times."

What do you enjoy about learning in RE?

Year 3 pupil; "We learn about Jesus and God, it is about how you can walk in God's footsteps and how you can link it all to important things for you."

Year 4 pupil; "It is interesting to learn about what people believe and think about the world, you can learn from other people in  your class."