RE Primary Curriculum- The Way The Truth and The Life
Introduction to Foundation Stage, KS1 and Key Stage 2 RE Curriculum
This syllabus is based on the Religious Education Curriculum Directory for Catholic schools. It has been developed by teachers in direct response to a perceived need for a clear framework for effective, systematic and rigorous teaching and learning, at least equal to that of other curriculum areas. To this end it addresses both content and methodology.
The primary content of all religious education material is the teachings and practices of the Catholic Church and their implications for the lives of people today, and particularly for the lives of the pupils. Religious education material must, therefore, always present the three key elements of the Christian faith:
- that every human event is marked by the creative activity of God which communicates goodness to all beings;
- that the reality and power of sin limit and numb every person;
- that the life, death and resurrection of Christ, communicated by the Holy Spirit, give believers the hope of a definitive ‘fulfilment’.
Other faiths are addressed as a consequence of, and in the context of, Catholic teaching. Catholic teaching about the action of God in the world requires an informed and respectful approach to other faiths. By a study of the action of God in these faiths, Catholics can come to a deeper appreciation of the revelation of God in Christ. Catholics can also learn from the practices of other faiths.
The Way The Truth and the Life incorporates attainment targets: learning about the Catholic faith (AT1) and learning from the Catholic faith (AT2). These are set out in the form of specific key learning objectives for each module.
Methodology
Our starting point in presenting the religious content specified by the Religious Education Curriculum Directory [RECD] should be REVELATION. God is always the initiator in the history of our creating and redemption; it is His revealing of himself that makes classroom religious education possible. To begin with Revelation ensures that we respect the revealed nature of Christian faith.
From Revelation we move onto CHURCH; in other words, we consider how Revelation gives life to the Church. The Church is, at one and the same time, the bearer of God’s Revelation and the divinely ordered means by which human beings live out their response to Revelation, enlivened by the Holy Spirit who fills the Church.
From here we focus on two aspects of the Church’s response to God’s Revelation: CELEBRATION – the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church, and LIFE IN CHRIST – the moral life and the pursuit of holiness – both enabled and enlivened by the activity and presence of God in the Church.
REVELATION
CHURCH
CELEBRATION
LIFE IN CHRIST
Each of these Areas should, as far as possible, without artificial distortion of the content areas, be covered in each Module of work. “The Gospel message always, at some point, takes the person beyond the scope of their own experience, challenging and transforming it. It is a message of a saving and transforming gift”.
Foundation & Key Stage 1
The Way, the Truth & the Life syllabus
