Curriculum Branches

Curriculum Branches

Our Religious Education curriculum follows the model curriculum set out in the Religious Education Directory, To Know You More Clearly. It is organised into six branches of learning, which are taught across the six half-terms of the school year.

The curriculum is based on the story of salvation history and guides children on a meaningful learning journey each year. Learning is carefully sequenced so that pupils can build their understanding step by step.

As a spiral curriculum, children return to each branch every year. This helps them to deepen their understanding over time and to see how their learning connects to Catholic beliefs and daily life. Through this approach, pupils are supported in making links between different areas of knowledge within the wider story of God’s love and plan for the world.

The six curriculum branches:

• Creation and Covenant – Pupils encounter the God who creates and calls all people with a focus on the accounts of creation

• Prophecy and Promise – Pupils explore the expectant waiting for the Messiah through the Advent season

• Galilee to Jerusalem – Pupils experience the ministry of Jesus and the Word of God through parables, encounters, miracles and teachings

• Desert to Garden – Pupils study the season of Lent and its culmination in the events of Holy Week

• To the Ends of the Earth – Pupils study the events that flowed from the Resurrection and Ascension in the coming of the Holy Spirit and the work of the apostles and early Church

• Dialogue and Encounter – Pupils learn how Christians work together with people of different religious backgrounds, building an understanding that all people work towards a common good and should respect all humanity

In addition, each year group has their own overarching theme which runs through each of the branches.

Year 1 – Revelation – How do people know about God?

Year 2 – Baptism – becoming part of the Christian community and being reborn to a new life in Christ

Year 3 – Celebrating the Eucharist

Year 4 – People whose lives have been transformed by faith and hope in God

Year 5 – Significance of the Old Testament in relation to the revelation of Jesus

Year 6 – The Gospel of John