Articles by REtoday

In this issue of REtoday, themed around identities, we are very glad to have some thoughtful reflections from transgender Christians, considering what it means to identify differently from your birth gender and to do...

The New Room at Bristol, where John Welsey's anti-slavery preaching started a riot, is a great place to take pupils for an RE visit, but even if they can't make the trip, this activity opens up connections between...

Many teachers are finding it hard to maintain an engaging, provocative and active curriculum in RE under socially distanced classroom conditions. Here are ten ideas from the Editor to adapt for your classroom, hall or...

RE Today Editorial Team
This is a story about humankind’s treatment of the Earth since the Industrial Revolution. It is adapted from an unknown source. Compare it with the story of God creating the world in...

We interviewed Peter Tatchell, campaigner of equality for gay and lesbian people, to find out about his effective action for justice. This article may be useful for your students in examination classes studying issues of...

Tim Lee and Naomi Anstice’s schools have both achieved the RE Quality Mark (REQM), overcoming some problems many RE subject leaders face. We asked how they did it, and their practical responses feature below.

The Editor likes to publish pupils’ own writing, and this article from pupils at Bishop Bridgeman CE Primary School in Bolton shows how, when it comes to RE and spiritual development, they are doing it for...

Why might I want to use multiple-choice questions in RE?

This feature asks pupils to examine why religion (and possibly atheism too) can be annoying. Sometimes it is good RE to look at the ‘dark side’ of a worldview, our own or someone else’s. Use the script below to...

RE in the Early Years Foundation Stage (from the 2013 RE Council Framework) Religious Education is, unlike the subjects of the National Curriculum, a legal requirement for all pupils on the school roll, including all...

RE today magazine is always interested in work where older pupils become learning facilitators for younger pupils, so with the theme of ‘Wisdom, ancient and modern’ for this issue we invited some primary schools to...

What happened at Easter and what does it all mean? Big questions and big ideas for Christians. If you are teaching Easter to your primary pupils this term, a box of Easter artefacts (including a chocolate rabbit) could...

What would you do to make the infant RE classroom open to big ideas and questions? The REtoday Editorial Team shares some activities that will open minds to the big stuff in RE. Here we go – which ones can you...

Who says small children can’t access big thoughts, ask big questions and understand big ideas? Below we present ten techniques to show your pupils that their big questions matter.

A philosophical forest Plashet School in East Ham is a state comprehensive all-girls’ secondary school. There are approximately 1,350 learners at the school, and all learners study PRE (Philosophy, Religion and Ethics)...

JESUSʻ TEMPTATION: A KEY NARRATIVE FOR RE The New Testament gospels tell a strange story of Jesus being tempted by Satan in the desert, just after he was baptised. The new Lion Comic Book Hero Bible retells this story...

We asked some children in the infants if they thought God had favourite animals. All of them had some thoughts about this, which may be a sign of an interesting question. The answers were fascinating because the question...

The creatures that inhabit this earth – be they human beings or animals – are here to contribute, each in its own particular way, to the beauty and prosperity of the world. The 14th Dalai Lama (2004) After living and...

At RE Today, we believe we have a great way of lifting a whole school’s ambition and achievement in RE through whole-school professional development, often through clusters of school, multi-academy trusts and other...

This article shares approaches to enable interest, engagement and deep thinking in pupils.

In Christian scriptures, God – or ‘God in Jesus’ – is sometimes compared to animals. This might be a bit surprising, because humans sometimes think animals are ‘lesser beings’ than themselves, and God is...

The BBC has resources for every age group from 4–16 in RE. Many teachers still don’t know about these, nor the classroom learning ideas we publish to support them. Here’s the script for one of our new BBC...

The REtoday Editorial Team considered this term’s theme. We made this list of our top 20 manifestations of religion globally. What an arrogant idea! Make your own list if you wish before reading on: did you share...

1. Shared stories, different meaning? When telling stories from a shared tradition, make sure you get it right. For example, Adam and Hawa (Eve) feature in the Qur’an, but Hawa does not tempt Adam to eat the fruit;...

This idea is one of many ways to move RE in an enquiring direction. If we think of pupils as researchers, then the enquiring purposes of RE come into focus. So we asked several schools (thanks to them all) to set...

RE seems to require teaching everything, alongside factual content of rituals and vocabulary. A pick from REtoday 35:1 includes promoting critical thinking1 and negotiating conflicting worldviews2 in a way that is...

Letter writing is often suggested by textbooks as a way to enable pupils to respond to an issue. In this example, we go further, and offer four ‘letter starts’ that address key issues in Islam and science, with...

01Outdoor homework: night sky mysteriesFor a 14-minute homework task, pupils are asked to stand alone in the open air one night in the next week and look into the sky on a dark clear night for six minutes. They are asked...

When teaching about topics related to science and religion, it is so important to get the question right. Here, the REtoday Editorial Team consider good questions on this term’s theme for different age groups. What do...

This powerful learning tool for pupils in moral education and RE was first devised in the mid-1990s. This version enables any teacher to work on the values agenda today.

Sikh values in action in Northampton

Yafa Shanneik is a lecturer at the University of South Wales. She offers insight into gender and Islam for students learning about Islam for examinations.

We wanted to explore the controversy that arose when BBC’s Songs of Praise was broadcast from a makeshift church in the ‘Calais Jungle’ refugee camp last summer.

Martyn Joseph, singer songwriter, released ‘I Searched for You’ in 2015. We asked Martyn some questions about the song, and provide below some learning ideas about the search for God.

Aaminah Verity is a young Muslim from England who is studying to be a GP. She volunteered to work in medical refugee camps, first in Slovenia, and then, for six weeks, on the Greek island of Chios. She set up a blog...

Stephen Fischbacher is a musician from Edinburgh with a large following wherever RE, music and Christianity intersect. We asked him what tunes up his guitar.

Stephen Melzack is a Jewish musician who works with pupils in all kinds of schools. We asked him how music can help RE, starting with one of his most popular songs: ‘Two Candles Burn’, about Shabbat.

We asked teachers at the NATRE St Albans local group how to make best use of music in RE. Several responded, and here are their ideas. Thanks to Juliet Lyal (Cunningham Hill Infant School), Sarah Kropman (Cunningham...

For the second year running, the Religion, Philosophy & Ethics (RPE) course at the University of Gloucestershire has run an essay competition for sixth-formers. This year entries nearly doubled, with some fantastic...

We thought it might be fun to crowd-source some wisdom from pupils, so we asked on Facebook for wise comments and questions heard in recent RE lessons. Here are a few of our favourites. Why not make a ‘wall of...