Religious Education
Faith Life Inquiry
Caith Malone
Dear Families,
What’s been happening in the RE space at SoGS this week?
As Catholic Educators we are committed to ongoing learning in the area of Faith Development. In the Archdiocese of Melbourne teachers are required to have accreditation to teach and/or lead in a Catholic School and once accreditation has been gained, we all must maintain study in this area every year. This ensures that our Learning and Teaching in this area is relevant and meaningful so that we can give our students the best faith development possible. In partnership with you, the parents, we want everyone in our community to have access to a deeply personal relationship with God.
Last week staff from our three Parish Schools attended a Professional Development led by Fr Dishan who guided us through Church Dogma on the topic of Mary. We had time to pray together, listen to Fr Dishan’s presentation and then enter into discussion with our peers, before some time for questions.
Class teacher’s planning time last week centred around the theme of Assessment in RE which aligns with our current School Improvement Goals. We investigated how to assess the Religious Education Curriculum and how to create Rich Assessment Tasks that will engage our students, whilst showing us the learning and understandings that children have gained in Religious Education. As with any subject, this will allow us to know what the students have learnt in order to plan for the next stages of teaching. We don’t assess the personal faith of students but we can assess the skills that have been attained whilst covering the content, just as we do in all subject areas.
Our Religious Education Framework consists of Five Content Areas:
- Scripture and Jesus
- Church and Community
- God, Religion and Life
- Prayer, Liturgy and Sacrament
- Morality and Justice
We engage in three strands of learning through the content areas:
Knowledge and Understanding : Students learn how to explain
Reasoning and Responding: Students learn how to interpret
Personal and Community Engagement: Students learn the skills of reflecting and integrating
