Curriculum RE at St. Mary's

Religious Education is the “core of the core curriculum” in a Catholic school (Pope St John Paul II). Through Religious Education, pupils study the Catholic tradition and come to an appropriate knowledge and understanding of the different religious dimensions of life. They are given the opportunity to examine their own religious attitudes and to respect the convictions of others. We teach tolerance and respect for other religions, traditions and cultures. Please see our British Values statement.

The Way, Truth and Life' curriculum planning is used throughout the school and supported by materials from CAFOD, to ensure we meet the needs of our children. All classes follow the Religious Education Curriculum Directory. Time spent on this area of the curriculum varies from 2 to 2.5 hours per week.

Religious Education is further enhanced and given expression through the liturgical life of the church by attendance and active participation in the Mass and the sacraments through the observance of religious services and festivals. 

The Catholic faith perspective is not an added extra, which we teach and offer to the children, it is integrated into the whole life of the school and into all the aspects of the curriculum. Please visit our Catholic Life page to find out more about how our faith is reflected in our school life.

Bound together as we are, by the unity of our faith, the children’s education is developed in an atmosphere of caring, sharing and example.

HRSE at St. Mary's

At St. Mary's Catholic Primary School we are inspired by Jesus to be the very best we can be. We look after one another and show respect and love through our relationships with one another. We use the term Human Relationships and Sex Education (HRSE) as we believe that relationships education is about all aspects of growing a fulfilled and happy life; sexual education is a dimension of this greater whole.

Any teaching about love and sexual relationships in school must be rooted in this belief which is expressed in the Church’s teaching about relationships, marriage, sex and family life.

We encourage children from the earliest age to recognise that they are all children of God and that each person shares a God given dignity. As children mature, we encourage them to follow the example of Jesus and live lives inspired by the Gospel virtues, enabling them to follow His commandment to “Love your neighbour as yourself” (Mark 12:31). This is the basis for all relationships in our school where we model Christian Virtues. We follow the guidance of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and ‘Fit for Mission? Schools’.

See below our parents information leaflet and school policy.

Curriculum RE

2023 - 2024

Curriculum RE

2022 - 2023

In our RE topic this half term, Merckx Class are learning about The Christian Family. As part of their work, they have been learning about the Sacrament of Baptism - what this means and how to live a Christian life. Some of the children, in Merckx class, who have been baptised brought in their photo and we played a game of Guess Who. They are going to continue discussing this special event as a class, what happens at baptism and those children who have been baptised to share information about their special day.

The children in Year 2/3 have been studying the chosen people of God, listening to their story and learning about what they did to show their belief and trust in God.

In Year 5/6 the children have begun their RE this year by discussing God's Kingdom and linking to their PSHE work - positivity and mental health and how everyone is welcome in God's Kingdom.

As part of Year 4s work on Holy Week, they studied the events of Holy Thursday - Last Supper, Garden of Gethsemane and Peter's denials. The children rewrote the story in their own words from what they understood and remembered in detail.

Year 6 have deepened their understanding of Jesus and they reflected on Jesus and their faith.  They worked as a group to find different Bible references in the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  They read these and discussed how Jesus was truly God and truly human.  They then taught their peers in front of the class about what they had learnt. 

During Spring I, our focus is going to be on Inspirational People. We are exploring the question ‘who is inspirational to you?’ during our RE lesson and have discussed why God is the most inspirational person that we can look up too.

Bly class have been learning about Jesus's birth. We listened to the story of The Annunciation and talked about how Mary would have been feeling. The children looked at some different art works that depicted The Annunciation and then created their own piece of art to show angel Gabriel telling Mary she will have a baby. We also learnt about advent and talked about the ways we might prepare for Christmas. The children helped make our own class advent wreath which had a new candle to light each week during our worships sessions.

Blackpool Schools and youth work Charity visited Year 2 to tell them about the journey of the Christmas Story. They pretended they were explorers to find out the real meaning of Christmas and sang songs with the shepherds and sheep.

Year 1 children acted out the Nativity story in our R.E lessons this week. The children knew that the shepherds were the first person to visit Mary and her special baby. The special baby was Jesus, the Son of God.

Year 4 learnt about the Holy Trinity being three persons in one - God. We discussed how this can the difficult to fully understand but the children worked hard as we researched and discussed different images of the Holy Trinity. They then moved onto creating their own representation of it to show their understanding.

Last half term Year, focused on God’s Covenant. We have explored the question ‘what is a covenant?’ during our RE lessons and discussed how we can be part of God’s new covenant. 

As part of Advent in Year 2, they learnt how Christians prepare for the birth of Jesus and made Christingles.

This year, Pope Francis declared that it would be The Year of St. Joseph, where we would learn about the simple, yet holy life he led as the father, on Earth, to Jesus. The children studied paintings of Joseph, in which often, he was working and Jesus would be by his side. The children discussed what they could see, symbols that were used and how the people might be feeling at that moment. After this, the children responded by drawing their own picture of Joseph and Jesus together.

Curriculum RE

2019 - 2021

Goshawk class retold the story of The Presentation. We found out that Mary and Joseph took Jesus to the Temple as a baby. This was a special occasion as it was a tradition and they wanted to say thank you to God for Jesus. In the Temple, they met a good man called Simeon.  For many years Simeon had been praying that God would keep His promise and send a king to rule over His people. When Mary and Joseph walked past Simeon, he felt his heart jump inside him. He got up, looked at the baby and straight away he knew that this baby was God's special gift for everyone. Simeon said "Lord God, you have kept your promise. I can now die a happy man because I have seen Jesus, the Light of the World".

Reception Class listened to the scripture 4:18-22 'Jesus Calls His Disciples'. They retold the story and thought about why they followed Jesus. Also, thy thought what makes a good friend and how being a good friend helps Jesus.

This half term, Hobby have been learning about the miracles of Jesus and the message God wants us to learn from them so we can follow his example. The children shared bread around the class but we did not have enough for everyone. We discussed how the children left out were feeling and then some of the children shared their own piece of bread so everyone had a piece. One group of children used role play to retell the story of ‘The feeding of the 5000’ using religious words and phrases. While other children, sequenced the story using religious words and phrases. The class then went on to answer questions about the message of the parable.

This half term, in R.E, we have been talking about the word 'inspirational' - what this means and who is an inspiration and why. We began with Jesus, then discussed someone close to them and why. As a class we have studied Fr Damien De Verser and St. Jospehine Bahkita. In additon, the children worked with parents at home to chose someone of faith, who is well-known because of their actions, for example: Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, Mother Teresa. 

Above are some examples: Lukas wrote about Pope Francis, Gracie wrote about Martin Luther King and Zyien wrote about our parish priest Fr Michael Murphy. There was work has been added to our display with other work completed on these inspirational people.

The children from the Goshawk class visited St. Mary’s Church and had the opportunity to understand what it means to belong to the Church family. It was also an opportunity to look around the church and understand that the Word of God is present in many ways and when we go to church, it is like going to our shared family.

In RE last week, Hobby class learnt about the Advent wreath and what each candle represented. We thought about how we could spread love, joy, peace and hope during Advent. We next each made an Advent wreath and then wrote an Advent promise to go on the Christmas tree in the hall. We then placed our Advent promises on the tree and thought about the journey Mary and Joseph made to Bethlehem to prepare for the birth of Jesus.

We had a special visit from Father Michael this week. We asked him some questions and he told us about his job in church.

Some of the questions we asked were:

Is it lovely in church?

What do you do in church?

Why do you wear those clothes?

Why do we call you Father Michael?

Is your cloth green at church?

The children enjoyed listening to Father and learning more about him in preparation for our first visit to church.

On Monday 18th November, two parents from the Goshawk class joined us with their new-born babies. They shared their experiences of preparing for the birth of their babies and talked about their journey to hospital. We then compared their experiences with the journey Mary had to make to Bethlehem and the birth of Jesus.

God’s world is very beautiful.  He has made the world for us to live in. The children made something that they like about God’s world with their parents to share and discuss in class.

Curriculum RE 2018 - 2019

When reflecting on Peter's escape from prison by the angel and how the other apostles and believers prayed to God and Saul's journey in becoming Paul, a dedicated apostle of Jesus, who often turned to prayer. We thought about the purpose of prayer. How do we know someone is praying? Why might a Christian talk to God? What types of prayer are there? Van Gogh thought learnt about these two particular apostles, about how prayer was important to them and what prayer means to Christians including themselves.

Ringgold Class looked at the story of Jesus rising from the tomb and how the disciples felt during this time. We have looked at the resurrection and how we can use this story to add to our catholic journey.  We have discussed how we prayer and why it is important to us and other Catholics, including creating our own prayer book and teaching people how to prepare for prayer. 

These workshops on Bible Explorers chronologically strings together some of the key stories and figures the students may have intermittently heard about and puts them in context as well as highlighting in a dynamic, creative way many of the religious words, concepts and traditions that underpin Christianity. Below is Amanda's feedback form which she shared with us about her experience of being a visitor to Year 6 during the 4 weeks.

Some fantastic examples of the Year 6 children's writing as they wrote as a British soldier experiencing the Christmas Truce, during Christmas 1914. The children had to consider how this event reflected the true meaning of Christmas, to them as Christians.

Here are an example of some the newspaper articles the children wrote after watching an animation called 'The Coat - the story of charity'. We explored the noun and verb terminology of charity; what we do as individuals, with our families and as a school to be charitable and why. The children explained God is love, the 10 commandments, especially 'love thy neighbour' and how the bible tells us what to do. 

Matthew 25:35-36 

³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me

in, ³⁶ I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

In RE this half term, we have been focusing on God's Family. The children understand that we are all part of God's family as well as our own families and school family. Some children are able to suggest things we can do to become part of God's family, such as being kind, sharing, loving each other and saying sorry when you have done something wrong. When we read the story about Zaccheus meeting Jesus, the children recognised that he wasn't part of God's family as he had taken something that didn't belong to him, but when he apologised and gave it back, he could become part of his family. The children have enjoyed learning the song, 'he's got the whole world in his hands' and have been using the musical instruments independently to sing it! 

As Jesus' birthday approaches, we will be learning about the Christmas Story and Advent. 

We have been learning about the Bible and reading different stories from the Bible.  We know why God chose David to spread his love, we've reflected upon God's call to Moses and also learnt about Sikhism.  As part of our work we have also taken part in some role play. This half term we are talking about why it is important to trust in God.  We've identified people we can trust and we've also written our own prayers.