A tin of tripe will always be a tin of tripe.

When I first read the Commission on RE 2018 Report, 'Religion and Worldviews, the way forward', I must admit, that I was a little disappointed. The report recommends changing the name to Religion and Worldviews and making all schools have to teach it under a national entitlement. That national entitlement should include teaching the complexity …

The lost lens in my curriculum thinking and how that affects disadvantaged pupils

In Making every RE lesson count we consider RE in a multi-disciplinary way including theology, philosophy and social sciences. We talk about how we can evaluate our curriculum using the Church of England self evaluation audit. From doing this, I knew that Social Sciences was the poor relation in my planning but I’ve now been …

Becoming a unicorn teacher… a précis of Teaching in the Online Classroom, Lemov

One of my most favourite quotes from the book: Teaching in the Online Classroom is this one: 'It is a challenge to train or to find the unicorn teacher who both excels in bricks and mortar instruction.. and has the tech savvy it takes...to deliver high quality, engaging, synchronous instruction'. Yet, that is what we …

Testing, Testing…1,2,3

I love teaching RS GCSE. I know that our students learn more now about the theology, philosophy and social sciences that underpin our amazing subject than they used to, and they come out with a really clear understanding of some of the different worldviews that they encounter. They can hold really intelligent conversations with each …

Keep Calm… and John 3:16 doesn’t really have the same ring to it!

I used to tell my students, ‘when all else fails... love your neighbour’ There was a time when ‘Love your neighbour’ was just about the only quote that you could guarantee that every student would use in the RS GCSE. They’d use it for everything... wealth and poverty, religion and sport (what was that about?). …

How will I know if…?

we are assessing students’ work accurately and consistently across the department? As a leader of Teaching and Learning and a recent Head of RE, I have been thinking about what makes a good Head of Department and I think one of the most important questions to ask is this one... How will I know if... …

Knowledge Rich is not a Knowledge Organiser

What is a Knowledge Rich Curriculum? My thoughts around a Knowledge Rich Curriculum have been forming for some time.   The work of ED Hirsch, Alex Quigley, Mary Myatt, Michael Young, Christine Counsell, Clare Sealy, Michael Fordham, Sam Strickland and many others have informed what I think about what a Knowledge Rich Curriculum is, and how …

Why this? Why now? A practical guide to RE curriculum review..

Still the earworm.... This morning, I blogged about the difficulties that we have as a subject because we don't have an agreed list of substantive or disciplinary knowledge. As a subject discipline, we have a multitude of voices: SACREs that agree the Locally Agreed Syllabi, the complexity of faith schools, non-faith schools and academies. I …

Why this? Why now? An RE curriculum conversation

I always feel like singing along to this when I say ‘Why this? why now?’ What started with a pretty innocuous question from my HT and a conversation with a few twitter peeps has turned into an ear worm, and a little bit of an existential crisis for me. Why are you teaching THIS, and …

What are your unknown unknowns? And why is this important?

In my school, we focus on Growing Great Teachers through Talking about Teaching. We have a common pedagogical framework (through Rosenshine) and we have set aside (a lot) of time for staff to talk about how to teach stuff. But more and more, I am thinking about how discussions about how to teach need to …