Our School’s Vision Statement;

Within God's love for everyone,

Our school family is committed to serve by:

- celebrating everyone's unique God-given talents;

- giving the best of ourselves for all the world;

- doing all the good we can together.

This heart-felt vision was not created by one person alone but through a collective working group of Church leaders, Governors, Senior leaders, teachers and teaching assistants who dedicated their time and effort to help embrace the words of John Wesley, to solidify our aims for all our staff and children and to celebrate our enthusiastic and passionate team work both in school and within the local community. Our vision was created to inspire children, promote high standards of reflection and questioning and to nurture caring, responsible and empathetic young people regardless of their religious background. The sentimental words thread through everything we do and now that our Reverend has put them to music, they are sung, with actions, by all of the staff and children in worship in true Methodist style!

We also have a strong focus on Christian values here at LMS such as…

The values are constantly being nurtured in the Infants through our Christian Value slips. When a child demonstrates compassionate behaviour, their actions are written onto a personalised slip of paper and put into a bag. In our Celebration Worship, children’s slips are picked out of the bag and they are rewarded for their efforts. As the reasons are read aloud, we all feel extremely proud of our children and there are always a few “ahhhs” from the parents in the hall! In the juniors, children are also rewarded with a Christian Value Certificate if they have demonstrated one of our core values within their week at school.

Intent

So, here in our Leyland Methodist Schools, we strive to give our children the opportunity to experience a broad and balanced RE Curriculum enhanced with high quality experiences, wonderful enrichment days/events and real life opportunities, whilst rewarding them for kind and caring behaviour towards others…. And of course, we want our learners to have lots of fun!

RE and the National Curriculum

The locally agreed syllabus and Diocesan syllabus for RE has been a good starting point for our schools and teachers then personalise learning in response to the needs of our children.

Units of work have been mapped out from EYFS to Year 6 in order to nurture their thinking, questioning and to become a value upholder!

It all begins in EYFS!

The EYFS refers to spiritual wellbeing, acknowledging the fact that children have experiences beyond the purely emotional. Their spiritual wellbeing is enhanced by recognising that children develop spiritually by exploring answers to their questions, developing their sense of place in the world and beyond.

In finding out about others, young children start reflecting on belief, culture and practice and explore faith through:

• stories 
• visuals - photos, pictures
• toys and puppets
• handling real artefacts
• roleplay 
• creativity – dance, drama, art and design
• non-fiction books
• using ICT
• discussion

Religious Education in EYFS can make an active contribution to all areas but has a particularly important contribution to make to:

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

• Children use some stories from religious traditions as a stimulus to reflect on their own feelings and experiences and explore them in various ways.

• Using a story as a stimulus, children reflect on the words and actions of characters and decide what they would have done in a similar situation. They learn about the story and its meanings through activity and play.

• Using role-play as a stimulus, children talk about some of the ways that people show love and concern for others and why this is important.

• Children think about issues of right and wrong and how humans help one another.

Communication and Language

• Children have opportunities to respond creatively, imaginatively and meaningfully to memorable experiences.

• Using a religious celebration as a stimulus, children talk about special events associated with the celebration.

• Through artefacts, stores and music, children learn about important religious celebrations.

Understanding of the World

• Children ask and answer questions about religion and culture, as they occur naturally within their everyday experiences.

• Children visit places of worship.

• They listen to and respond to a wide range of religious and ethnic groups.

• They handle artefacts with curiosity and respect.

Expressive Arts and Design

• Using religious artefacts as a stimulus, children think about and express meanings associated with the artefact.
• Children share their own experiences and feelings and those of others, and are supported in reflecting on them.

Our Progression Document

In order to tailor the day to day planning right the way through school, we have undertaken a thorough Curriculum Needs Analysis, studying the characteristics of our learners here in Leyland to ensure that our curriculum fulfills their requirements. To support the continuity and progression of their learning we have also developed a detailed Progression Document that maps out the key skills in learning throughout all aspects of RE and shows what these skills look like at each level from Year 1 through to Year 6. This progression document provides clarity for both teachers and learners alike – it signals clearly what the expected level of progress looks like at each Key Stage and aids the assessment in what is a difficult subject to measure without hindering the opportunities for high levels of awe and wonder and deeper reflection of the impact their learning has on their own lives.

Cultural Capital

As Leyland is a predominantly white British town, LMS firmly believe that RE offers the perfect opportunity to develop our children’s cultural experiences. Through using local links, we provide stimulating high quality enrichment opportunities to help the children make sense of the information encountered in lessons thus broadening their learning potential.

The new enrichment outline enables children to visit at least 3 different places of worship in their time with us. We have timetabled year groups to visit a local Synagogue, Hindu temple and all year groups are welcomed by Reverend Gill, our new female reverend, into our own Church to learn more about it and to provide worship for our families and those in the local community. In order to strengthen her relationship with the children, she also visits our school once a week not only to provide a fun and engaging worship but she stays with us all morning to work with the children and help out!

New links with a Preston school that has a contrasting faith background are being nurtured so that Year 2 and Year 4 children have an opportunity to make new friends and learn about the lives of children close by. As RE coordinator I attend the Cluster groups meetings held at our school where new ideas and new local initiatives are always noted, shared and implemented – keeping LMS right up to date!

Enrichment opportunities have also included visits from The Bethany Project, the Fairtrade company and we also hold an annual Multi Faith week for staff to focus completely on creating a memorable week for the children. Within this week staff provide a continuous supply of creative and faith related lessons/activities right across the school. This year the whole school had a visit from Prags, the local Hindu dancer, who delivered differentiated dance lessons and provided everyone with delicious Indian food which everyone enjoyed! We also invited our parents in from other faith backgrounds to talk to the children, which undeniably helps those few children from other faiths to feel valued, welcome and understood. The children created their own questions….they asked the Islamic family about their dress and what it was like to have lived in Egypt and they asked if they could demonstrate how to write in Arabic. The Jehovah Witness families told us about how Christianity is so similar to their religion and brought us in sweetened unleavened bread to eat. Wonderful, fascinating links to our community.

This multi-faith week creates the perfect opportunity to collectively celebrate the children’s work with parents as we display a whole school collection at the end of the week. The children readily invite their parents in to show them the Pop up displays and enthusiastically discuss what they’ve been doing. 

The enrichment opportunities offer the children the unique and first-hand experience of meeting people from other faiths, visiting places of worship and helps to create memories. It helps them to analyse and connect key knowledge, concepts and vocabulary in RE to make their learning more meaningful.

We also have an Ethos Committee. Our Ethos group is made up of children from each year group and they also do a fantastic job! They have organised Foodbank collections throughout the year and lead some of their own worship. Taking the food to the foodbank is incredibly moving and parents respond readily to the collection of not just staple foods but of extra special goodies like Easter eggs and Christmas luxuries! We meet weekly to work on new ideas and to focus on how to embed our Values further. Real little heroes!

Diversity

In our increasingly diverse and multicultural society it is more important than ever for teachers to incorporate positive cultural learning in our classroom. This increase of diversity doesn’t only relate to race and ethnicity but it can include students of different religion, economic status and language background. Diversity in and out of the classroom will continue to grow so it is essential we prepare students to adapt positively to an evolving world and embrace those differences. So in order to fulfil our role, the RE scheme ensures the 80% Christian and 20% other faith coverage building in many opportunities to enhance the children’s curiosity and learning of other faiths through our enrichment activities.

Equality of Opportunity

Our RE Curriculum is personlaised for the needs of our learners and our school’s values are embedded, constantly demonstrated, praised and threaded throughout everything we do. We plan to excite and immerse ALL children regardless of background to offer a positive and vital foundation for life. Visits are funded through the Pupil Premium Strategy where necessary to allow inclusion for all. Assessments track all children and in particular vulnerable children in order to help them achieve their full potential and plan work according to their strengths.

We are extremely proud of ALL our children we have at our school!