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RE and Worship

 

Intent:

At Whittingham C of E Primary School, it is our intention to recognise the importance of the teachings of Christianity  in every aspect of daily life. We give the teaching and learning of RE the prominence it requires.
Implementation:

We will structure the lessons so that prior knowledge, revision of facts and key knowledge are built upon.

We will ensure that revision and introduction of key vocabulary and skills is built into each lesson.

We will ensure that children have the opportunity to apply these skills and language during the lesson.

Impact:

We want the children to develop an understanding of the teachings of Christianity and other World Faiths so that they begin to understand and celebrate similarities and differences and become positive members of the wider world.

As the children develop their vocabulary these will be displayed throughout the school/classroom for children to refer to during the lesson.

We will measure the impact of their learning through key questioning, child led assessment and summative assessment.

We follow the Northumberland Agreed Syllabus
Some examples of  RE lessons in school.
In Early Years the RE focus for the first Spring half term has been all about God and the last few weeks we have learned about the creation story. We have recapped this and thought about what we are most thankful to God for. We made thank you cards. Some of us were thankful for the moon and stars or sun and moon, or the animals and some of us were thankful for everything!
Links with our Church.
We have very close links with our Church and spend time in it for special occasions as well as lesson time and moment of quiet reflection.
 
Collective Worship.
Reverend Rich, Angela and Ed come into school each week to deliver our Tuesday Daily Act of Worship following the Open the Book resource.
KS2 had an excellent trip to both the Newcastle Hindu Temple and Newcastle Cathedral on the 29th February 2024. They learnt a lot about the features of both buildings and how they were used in their respective faiths as well as the actions and acts that took place in each place of worship. Thanks to Mrs Thomsen and Mrs Lewis for organising and running the trip as well as a big thank you to Mrs Woods and Mrs Craig for supporting with the trip too.
The Good Samaritan
 
This week, Class 1 had a lovely visit from Reverend Rich. He talked to us about the story of The Good Samaritan, and we created some frieze frames to recreate the story. We had a really good discussion about how this linked to our school values of showing respect, resilience and responsibility. 
Christmas Carols 2024.
We enjoyed a wonderful family Christmas Carol Service led by Reverend Rich. The children particularly enjoyed participating in the story Jesus’ Christmas Party.
January 2025
Thank you to everyone who came to the Christingle Service yesterday and to Reverend Rich and his congregation for organising it. We are really pleased to involve families and the wider community into our new style services so please do join us for our Easter Service which will be at 1.30pm on the last Friday before we break up for Easter ( details to follow soon).
February 2025 - 
Enis and Mirium from the Islamic Diversity Centre came to speak to the whole school about 'What it is like being a Muslim?' and they followed this with a workshop on 'prayer' with our KS 2 pupils. It was a very interesting afternoon and the children asked some excellent questions.
April 2025
 
Rev Rich and Mrs Townend have been joining us for some Godly play sessions in our Early years, one of our sessions was the story of the mystery of Easter. We looked at the circle of the church and how each segment represents each Sunday, we can see that Christmas and Easter are represented by symbols and Pentecost by the colour red. The white is celebration and the green is preparation and known as great green growing Sunday, the purple for advent and lent.

We lit our candle for worship and to represent that Jesus is the light of the world. We had a special purple bag because we are in purple now and we found 6 pieces in the bag, for 6 weeks of preparation in the lead up to Easter. We looked at the pieces and made predictions of what we thought the pieces were. The children had a go at putting the pieces together and then Rev Rich put the pieces together and we discovered it was a cross, the purple can signify sadness and then when we turned it over it turned to white - for celebration, so Easter can also be a celebration. 
Some of our year 5 and 6 pupils are part of the younger leaders debate group. Each month we meet via zoom and discuss and debate topics of importance such as the importance of social justice
June 2025
Class 2 went to ‘Lifepath’ at Brinkburn Priory where they learned all about St Oswald and his life and how he brought Christianity to Northumberland. Before we went to ‘Lifepath ’ Angela came to visit us and teach us some songs.
Also this month Rev’d Rich visited us in class to talk about his role in the community and how he offers help and support to people.
Faith in the North invited schools across the North of England to come together in saying the Lord’s Prayer on Friday 10th October 2025. It was during our Friday Reflections worship that we came together as a school to say the Lord’s Prayer. We are dressed in yellow as on the same day we were supporting Young Minds mental health campaign.
Celebrations with the Community -  School Year 2025-6
Reverend Rich came into school and made Christingles with the children in preparation for our Christingle Service. We look forward to sharing our songs and reflections with the community.