RE at the heart of a changing curriculum
Wiltshire Annual Secondary RE Conference
10 June 2010
Linking RE with Personal, Learning
and Thinking Skills
Dave Francis
mayfly@blueyonder.co.uk
Linking RE with the PLaTS
Independent enquirers
Focus:
Young people process and
evaluate information in their
investigations, planning
what to do and how to go
about it. They take informed
and well-reasoned
decisions, recognising that
others have different beliefs
and attitudes.
Creative thinkers
Focus:
Young people think
creatively by generating
and exploring ideas,
making original
connections. They try
different ways to tackle a
problem, working with
others to find imaginative
solutions and outcomes
that are of value.
Team workers
Focus:
Young people work
confidently with others,
adapting to different contexts
and taking responsibility for
their own part. They listen to
and take account of different
views. They form
collaborative relationships,
resolving issues to reach
agreed outcomes.
Self managers
Focus:
Young people organise
themselves, showing
personal responsibility,
initiative, creativity and
enterprise with a commitment
to learning and selfimprovement. They actively
embrace change, responding
positively to new priorities,
coping with challenges and
looking for opportunities.
Effective participators
Focus:
Young people actively
engage with issues that
affect them and those
around them. They play a
full part in the life of their
school, college, workplace
or wider community by
taking responsible action
to bring improvements for
others as well as
themselves.
Reflective learners
Focus:
Young people evaluate their
strengths and limitations,
setting themselves realistic
goals with criteria for
success. They monitor their
own performance and
progress, inviting feedback
from others and making
changes to further their
learning.
Disciplined curriculum innovation
– tools that help tell your story or the impact you are making
3
What are our learners like now?
Consider your learners’ predominant attitudes,
attributes, skills, knowledge and understanding.
• How well are they achieving the aims of the
curriculum and the five outcomes of Every
Child Matters?
• Are they attaining the highest standards
possible?
Where could they be?
“Your school will have set out its priorities for development in the School
self-evaluation form (SEF). The government has also defined national
priorities for secondary schools:
•developing successful learners, confident individuals and responsible
citizens;
•improving progress and attainment in subjects;
•improving pupils’ personal, learning and thinking skills and functional
skills;
•increasing participation, enjoyment and engagement;
•improving behaviour and attendance;
•the public policy agenda – personalisation, ECM, sustainability, social
cohesion, enterprise, narrowing the gap.
It is not practical to try to address everything at once. Identify the most
important areas for development in your school and focus on those.”
Curriculum Models
1. ‘Learning to Learn’ and ‘Competency-based’
models: tendency to give priority to the PLTS
over subjects.
2. Linking subjects with the PLTS through the
cross-curriculum dimensions: ‘In the very best
practice, the whole-curriculum dimensions
informed the rationale for developing the
curriculum, both across the school and within
subjects.’ Ofsted, 2009, Planning for Change.
3. Extended subject-focused lesson time, study
days, field trips and study weeks. QCA, 2007,
Activities to support design and development.
“Many schools plan for developing young people’s PLTS by
explicitly mapping PLTS objectives into schemes of work,
alongside subject-based objectives.”
http://curriculum.qcda.gov.uk/key-stages-3-and-4/skills/plts/index.aspx
How do we plan for PLTS?
Effective planning for PLTS in religious education needs to ensure that they
are embedded into sequences of work, teaching approaches and learning
outcomes. The following are some questions we might ask to support the
development of PLTS through religious education:
•Are there planned opportunities for learning and teaching, where the six PLTS can
be taught, practised and reinforced in a range of contexts?
•Are planned experiences sufficiently ‘open’ for learners to draw on personal
experiences and set themselves personal challenges?
•Do activities encourage learners to explore a range of settings, for example
collaborative work, individual work, in the classroom, the school and events in the
community?
•Are learners encouraged to communicate in a variety of ways?
•Are there opportunities to make coherent links to learning in other curriculum areas
to effectively connect and enhance learners’ experiences?
•Are e-technologies used effectively to enable and support such learning?
Example 1
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•
•
•
The teacher plans for the class to investigate why worship is important to many
people and what difference it makes to their lives, and to develop team-working
and reflective skills through this context.
It is important for the learners to develop the skills to become increasingly
independent, to make decisions and take responsibility about the direction and
format of their work.
Learners work in groups, taking on various roles and responsibilities that reflect
individual strengths and ensuring that each group member contributes effectively.
They will work over several lessons to a time-frame and will conclude by making
group presentations to the whole school, which will be part of a series of special
assemblies on culture and diversity.
They are supported and encouraged to develop appropriate success criteria and
design their own individual and group evaluation forms. They complete the forms
at the end of the task to help them reflect on their contributions and identify how
their enquiry might have been improved.
This activity involves learners in:
•
•
•
•
•
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planning how to research the importance of worship for their chosen religious
groups, including which lines of enquiry and methods to use (independent
enquirers, team workers)
allocating roles in welcoming and thanking their visiting faith representative and
deciding on what questions to ask (team workers, creative thinkers)
conducting a survey and organising a visit to a place of worship to gather
information on people’s views (team working, effective participators)
discussing and evaluating the evidence to agree different ways of presenting the
information for maximum effect (team workers, creative thinkers)
taking responsibility for the delivery of different aspects of the presentation and
giving constructive feedback to each other (effective participators, team workers,
reflective learners)
evaluating their own performance against criteria, including their perseverance in
completing the project on time and identifying targets for improvement (selfmanagers, reflective learners).
Are we achieving our aims?
In planning for progression, it is important to develop a clear picture of how learners
demonstrate PLTS in the context of teaching and learning in religious education and
how those skills can raise achievement in this subject.
For example, learners may demonstrate that they are:
•making personal choices about their learning and finding ways to improve their
work, for example by identifying their own questions and planning their own
enquiries
•transferring understanding, for example of a process from one subject to another
•increasingly drawing on their own experiences and making connections with key
concepts to develop insight, for example considering how their own values and
commitments might impact on their life in school and in their community
•extending their understanding, for example by exploring new ideas, options and
points of view, including their own, with more confidence and creativity.
Example 2
Our Year 9 students display a wide range of ability. They are used to working on crosscurricular projects which combine different subject areas and can see the relevance
of this to life outside school. They enjoy planning work in groups, listen carefully to
each others’ ideas and produce work of which they are proud. Our curriculum has,
however, provided them with few opportunities to investigate an issue in depth and to
present their work to audiences outside the school community.
We wanted to devise a project for the summer term that would enable us to enhance our
students’ experience of cross-curricular work by drawing on different disciplines. By
emphasising key concepts, process and new ideas for content we would be able to
identify genuine links between citizenship, history and RE.
See the film at: www.natre.org.uk/secondary/video.php?id=41
Example 3
In Year 7 students undertake a broad Humanities course, where History, Geography and RE have, in
principle, two terms each of a six term year. We can mix any of these subjects in a cross-curricular
project.
Citizenship is taught in one lesson per fortnight, but there are opportunities in a cross-curricular project to
incorporate active citizenship and to pick up some issues and activities in lesson time.
What differences did we want to see in our learners?
Providing compelling learning experiences would help students to develop their confidence to handle a
complex range of information from different sources and the resilience to persevere with the task of
linking relevant ideas from different subjects.
This would nurture the independent, critical thinking skills they need and encourage them to be more
proactive learners.
Another area lacking in our curriculum is the way in which we create a sense of the spiritual and encourage
a spiritual response. Therefore, through use of inspiring mixed media material, we hope to encourage
students to reflect more deeply on the world around them and their potential impact on it.
Linking RE with the PLaTS
To link RE with the Personal,
Learning and Thinking Skills
(PLaTS), it is best to start with
your RE programmes of study
and make connections to the
PLaTS.
If you do start with the PLaTS,
ensure that real RE learning
takes place by including
assessable tasks related to the
statements in your syllabus.
Decide on the focus for the RE
learning. Many RE syllabuses use
the following fields of enquiry:
A) beliefs, teachings and sources;
B) practices and ways of life;
C) expressing meaning;
In order to ensure that
students’ work will be
assessable in RE terms, ask the
three key questions:
1. What are we trying to
achieve?
2. How do we organise the
learning?
3. How will we know we have
achieved our aims?
Design a good ‘key question’
based on such RE Themes as:
• ideas and questions of meaning;
• authority;
• religion and science;
• expressing spirituality;
• ethics and relationships;
• rights and responsibilities;
• global issues;
• interfaith dialogue.
D) identity, diversity and
belonging;
E) meaning, purpose and truth;
F) values and commitments.
In order to obtain a balance
between the attainment
targets (or ‘processes’) of
learning about and from
religion, try focussing your
planning on ONE of A, B or C
alongside ONE of D, E or F.
RE syllabuses are arranged in
different ways but may well
make use of the suggested
themes of the non-statutory
framework for religious
education. Ensure at least ONE
of these is present in your plan.
A cross-curricular planning sequence
What key
concepts in
each subject will
this learning
enrich?
Which crosscurricular
dimension(s)
will connect our
subjects?
What key
processes or
skills will this
learning develop
or rehearse?
PLaTS GO HERE!
2
Now consider
What will our shared
learning objectives be?
How will young people
demonstrate they have
met our shared
learning objectives?
Who are the key
people we will
need to involve?
1
The way in –
Which subjects will
work together?
What is the key
question or relevant
line of enquiry?
How will we
organise
learning in the
curriculum?
Where will this
learning take
place?
What resources
will we need?
Designing Assessable Activities
Focus on TWO of the fields of enquiry and select an appropriate range of ‘can-do’ statements to
guide your activity design. Here is an example of how it might work:
KEY QUESTION: Can religious art change people’s lives?
Context
All pupils should:
In work on the crucifixion in

Christianity and the three marks
of existence in Buddhism, pupils
have considered such concepts
as inspiration, love, sacrifice,

anatta, anicca, dukkha, and
examples of Christian and
Buddhist symbolism.
LEVEL DESCRIPTORS
(Objectives for learning and
assessment)
seek advice from believers
in making comparisons
between two different
symbols of religious belief;
generate their own
questions about these
symbols and give answers
from their own and other
perspectives.
C5
I can use a wide
religious vocabulary in
suggesting reasons for the
similarities and differences in
forms of religious, spiritual and
moral expression found within
and between religions.
Focus areas: C & E
PLaTS: Self-managers & Creative thinkers
Most pupils should:
(Majority class expectation)
Some pupils could:


by a set date, produce a
portfolio of Buddhist and
Christian designs with
explanations linking
symbolism and belief;
 write a summary of their
own views on the most
important ideas being
expressed in the designs.
C6
I can use correct
religious and philosophical
vocabulary in explaining what
the significance of different
forms of religious, spiritual and
moral expression might be for
believers.
Choose a personally
challenging medium such as
a poem or a multi-media
presentation to interpret a
favourite piece from the
portfolio and hypothesise
why it might help believers
understand more about life’s
deep questions.
C7
I can use a wide
religious and philosophical
vocabulary as well as different
of forms of expression in
presenting a clear picture of
how people express their
religious, spiritual and ethical
beliefs in a variety of ways.
I can give my personal
E5
I can ask questions
E6
I can use reasoning and E7
view with reasons and
about the meaning and purpose examples to express insights
examples on what value
of life and suggest answers
into my own and others’ views
which relate to the search for
on questions about the meaning religious and other views might
have for understanding
truth and my own and others’
and purpose of life and the
questions about the meaning
lives.
search for truth.
and purpose of life.
For the full list of statements, see: