Context based learning - Water and Faith

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• Context
• Why did you choose this focus?
• What changes did you make?
• What was the impact of the changes?
• What influenced you?
• Top three takeaways

Alderman Davies is a large church in Wales Voluntary Aided Primary school with 288 learners on roll. The school is situated in Neath, South Wales. The school adjoins St David's church and in is the centre of the town with access to many facilities and the main shopping centre.

The focus of the project was to develop a concept-based approach to Religion, Values and Ethics (RVE) within the whole school value of Respect. In small groups, children were tasked with designing a lesson to peer teach to the class about the significance of water in a faith.

This learning strategy gave an opportunity to develop and display higher order thinking skills and those skills integral to the four purposes of Curriculum for Wales. This has been an ongoing focus in our Local Authority through the context of RVE.

Ahead of the RVE network, RVE teaching utilised a discrete approach using mainly Understanding Christianity. There was little connection with current class themes, other faiths or non-religious philosophical convictions. When termly concepts were introduced, it became apparent that to embed school values, the values themselves needed to become the concepts for teaching and learning. Simultaneously, ongoing professional learning focused on higher order thinking skills (HOTS) and additionally I was part of a Local Authority teaching and learning pilot scheme which supported this approach. When exploring the sub lenses of RVE within the Humanities Area of Learning and Experience (AoLE) it became clear that these elements would be my focus.

The Summer term whole school concept was Respect, with Year 5/6 zooming in on Rivers, Religion, Respect. Focusing on cynefin, the learning started geographically with the river Neath which runs through our locality.

We looked at how this river is the reason for our town’s existence and alongside this learners were illustrating an understanding of "Respect is..." through integrated values learning and collective worship. From here learning was to visualise a river from its source using a graphic modelling activity which involved retrieving key information and subject specific vocabulary from a given text. A new pedagogical element was introduced through explicit teaching of Boats activity on the journey of a river. This was to further embed subject specific vocabulary. The purpose of the activity was to learn about the importance of water in different domains.

An analysis activity ‘See, Think, Wonder’ of an image of people worshipping at a river gave opportunity to examine, hypothesise and speculate. Learners were then introduced to their task of working towards pupil led lessons on Water in Faith group task using previous learning where children:

• Organised their group into roles
• Planned a lesson to teach others about water in one faith or non-religious philosophical conviction
• Created a lesson plan
• Devised and produced engaging resources
• Delivered lesson to peers
• Evaluated using a reflection triangle

The water in faith resource did not include any non-religious philosophical convictions, so afterwards a Humanism comprehension on the poem ‘The Starfish Thrower’ was used to make connections with beliefs and actions.

RVE is no longer discretely taught in Year 5/6. Listening to learners from across school has shown that children can talk about their learning and understanding in RVE and that HOTS are evident in planning and learners' books. The next steps are to embed sub lenses into the RVE curriculum map so that it evolves, and lead a professional learning session to feedback on learner interviews and to share how RVE can sit within whole school concept planning and assessment.

The Church in Wales RVE Network sessions hugely influenced thinking, understanding and ultimately confidence of what good RVE might look like. Support from the Diocesan team when developing the curriculum map. Attending God and the Big Bang training broadened RVE thinking into the Humanities AoLE and further into other AoLEs such as Science and Technology. Being part of the Neath Port Talbot Teaching and Learning Pilot Scheme for concept planning, assessment, teaching strategies and HOTS.

1. Utilise the Church in Wales Website and break down of sub lenses when planning and deciding upon assessment
2. Continue to develop understanding of pedagogy around RVE so that it continues to be embedded into concepts and becomes an opportunity to develop skills integral to the four purposes
3. Own locality, context and ethos of school is so important when making RVE meaningful for children. They also need to feel safe in order to be curious and ask questions about the world around them which will ultimately shape ethically informed citizens