This article is for paying subscribers Therese Hoyle is a maestro of playtime, and she trains teachers and helps schools to encourage play that is fun first but also co-operative and contributes to the aims of the school. Her new book, a Speechmark...
This article is for paying subscribers This idea invites your pupils to spend imaginary money on a fantasy school trip. Read the boxes carefully in your group of four and respond to the six tasks in order, discussing each one until you agree. Keep careful...
This article is for paying subscribers Famously, J.R.R. Tolkien has a poem that includes the line ‘Not all those who
wander are lost.’¹ In many religions, to wander is to wonder. Pilgrims travel to
places they have imagined all their...
This article is for paying subscribers Paul Smalley, Edge Hill University, NASACRE Executive Assistant.
This article is for paying subscribers ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good’ says the Psalmist in Psalm 34. Sacred words for 3,000 years to Jewish people, Christians and (slightly differently) Muslims. That might add up to 55 per cent of the world’s...
This article is for paying subscribers Martin Buber (1878–1965), a great Jewish philosopher of personhood, says in his book I and Thou (Touchstone 1970): ‘Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity.’ Perhaps a part of his...
This article is for paying subscribers In this issue we have reviews from two members of the RE Today team who have clearly made good use of lockdown time for some significant reading. Lat Blaylock’s review of James W. Sire’s book on philosophical...
This article is for paying subscribers In April 1963 Martin Luther King wrote a ‘letter from Birmingham Jail’ that has become a landmark statement against racism in the USA and globally. Here we are, six decades later, still needing to talk about it....
This article is for paying subscribers This is an RE audit tool for pupils aged 8–14. If you dare, copy the page of 64 ideas for your classes and ask them for their help in improving your school’s RE
This article is for paying subscribers Exploring identity questions with 11–14s is an important part of enabling pupils to develop their own understanding of their position in relation to the world, including the worlds of religion and belief. These two...
This article is for paying subscribers Would you like to explore questions about community, values and respect with your 6–8s? Here are ideas for an RE day based upon the theme of this issue of REtoday: identities. Pupils often benefit from an intensive...
This article is for paying subscribers This activity is simple, flexible and potentially profound. A part of good RE around green issues is to consider whether religions have a part to play in climate justice and responding to the climate crisis, and to...
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This article is for paying subscribers The thinking skills structure called ‘Responsibility pies’ is useful for analysing any complex phenomenon where responsibility can be attributed to multiple parties. Who is responsible for the whales that die in...
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This article is for paying subscribers Lat Blaylock commends a new resource for RE from one of our great institutions of cultural capital, the British Library. If inspectors want to see a rich knowledge curriculum, and pupils deserve to explore sources of...
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This article is for paying subscribers Both of the reviewers in this issue have urged us, as professionals involved in RE, to make time for our own reading, going beyond texts we are obliged to read to explore those that provoke us to think more widely and...
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This article is for paying subscribers This strategy is perfect for exploring the ‘big concepts’ in RE GCSE or Scottish examinations, and also usable with much younger learners. The idea is derived from a strategy used by personal construct...
This article is for paying subscribers Read and discuss Anne Lewin’s poem with pupils. Many young people form the idea that prayer is like going shopping with a list: you ask God for things, and if they are in stock, you may be lucky enough to get them....
This article is for paying subscribers Yonah Matemba (YM), RE teacher trainer at the University of the West of Scotland, addresses a big issue in the subject in an interview with the Editor, Lat Blaylock (LB)
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This article is for paying subscribers Murderer to monk
This article is for paying subscribers 12 ideas about the Devil for classroom thinking
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This article is for paying subscribers Story is a key way in which religions communicate attitudes, virtues and ideas. So it is unsurprising that the great religions all tell stories with animals in them. Retell and work with these kinds of story in...
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This article is for paying subscribers While we were preparing this issue I came across the story of a dog in a dog collar. A chaplain who every week visited a home for people living with dementia told how he made no contribution until one day from...
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This article is for paying subscribers I wrote this short piece after a talk from the brilliant Mary Myatt about the new inspection framework. See what you think. The new Ofsted framework will use, from this year, three key ideas about the curriculum,...
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This article is for paying subscribers One reason teachers of RE are struggling with the new GCSE specifications is because the longer essay-style answers required of students are taxing the skills students have gained in putting together their thoughts in...
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This article is for paying subscribers Matthew Arnold (1822–88), poet, headmaster of Rugby and essayist, gave this idea to the educational world. Perhaps his best-known book is Culture and Anarchy (1869), in which he argues for the role of reading ‘the...
This article is for paying subscribers In writing this article, I wanted to try to sum up my – certainly personal – perspective on the recent history of RE in England. It is not always easy for teachers working in classrooms to observe and integrate...
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This article is for paying subscribers Everybody sang. The original musical instrument is the human voice.
Welcome to this issue of REtoday. The theme is wisdom. Scriptures from many traditions can be seen as collections of wisdom passed down the centuries, and if RE has an offer to pupils beyond the merely academic, then...
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