At Smithdown Primary School, together we grow through understanding, respect and reflection. Our Religious Education (RE) curriculum is designed to celebrate diversity and promote tolerance, empathy and mutual respect for all people — regardless of faith or belief.
We aim to provide every child with a broad and balanced understanding of world religions and non-religious worldviews, supporting them to explore life’s big questions about meaning, values and identity. RE at Smithdown plays a central role in promoting pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, helping them develop curiosity about the world and compassion towards others.
Our intent is for all pupils to:
Develop knowledge and understanding of a range of religions and beliefs, including Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism and non-religious perspectives such as Humanism.
Recognise the influence of religion on individuals, families and communities both locally and globally.
Reflect on their own beliefs, values and experiences in a safe and supportive environment.
Cultivate skills of critical thinking, respectful dialogue, ethical reasoning and empathy.
Appreciate how diversity and shared values contribute to life in modern multicultural Britain.
Religious Education is taught weekly across all year groups, following the Liverpool Agreed Syllabus, which provides a rich, progressive framework for exploring faith, belief and worldviews.
Our teaching approach is enquiry-based and experiential, encouraging pupils to ask “big questions” and explore answers through investigation, reflection and discussion.
Learning in RE is organised around three key strands that run throughout the curriculum:
Believing – exploring religious beliefs, teachings and sources.
Expressing – examining how beliefs are expressed through worship, celebrations, symbols and practices.
Living – understanding how beliefs influence daily life, moral choices, identity and community.
We bring RE to life through stories, artefacts, visits, visitors, drama, art, and music, helping children connect knowledge with experience. Lessons are inclusive and accessible, with adaptations made to ensure that pupils with SEND and EAL are fully supported and able to participate meaningfully.
Children also learn through cross-curricular opportunities, assemblies and themed events that promote British Values and interfaith understanding. Wherever possible, local links are made so that pupils can see how faith and belief are reflected in their own community.
Progression is carefully mapped across the school, building from early curiosity and awareness in EYFS to critical reflection and understanding by the end of Key Stage 2.
By the time pupils leave Smithdown Primary School, they:
Have developed a respectful understanding of a wide range of religious and non-religious worldviews.
Can articulate their own beliefs and values clearly and confidently, while showing empathy and respect for others.
Understand the importance of religion and belief in shaping culture, community and personal identity.
Recognise shared human values such as kindness, fairness and compassion.
Are prepared to live and contribute positively in a diverse, democratic and multicultural Britain.
We measure the impact of RE through:
Pupil voice – showing curiosity, engagement and thoughtful reflection.
Work scrutiny and lesson observations – demonstrating progression in knowledge, vocabulary and understanding.
Discussions and reflections – where pupils show respect, reasoning and a deepening appreciation of faith and belief.
Our RE curriculum helps pupils grow as inquisitive, reflective and open-minded learners, who understand that difference enriches our community and our world. Through RE, we nurture the values at the heart of our school motto — “Together We Grow.”
We had a great time making Diwa lamps, making Diwali cards, sharing the story of Rama and Sita, creating Diwali celebration food, tasting some of the foods that may be eaten during Diwali and watching the lighting of the Diwa lamps.
We made some special Diwali sweets, Diwali cards and shared some Diwali foods . Happy Diwali to everyone!
We have had a wonderful time learning about Diwali and more about the Hindu religion. We heard the story of Rama and Sita and why Hindus celebrate this important festival. We were even gifted some Diva lamps to decorate – which we loved! 
We have been leaning all about the celebration Diwali. We made Diwali lamps out of salt dough and decorated them with bright coloured paint and glitter. Don’t they look amazing!
We really enjoyed our special workshop today learning all about the festival of Diwali. We listened to stories, made patterns, dressed up and danced!
We loved our Diwali workshop today. Thank you to our special visitors.
Year 2 had so much fun learning how Diwali is celebrated. We loved making Rangoli patterns and Dancing!
We had a wonderful workshop this morning to celebrate Diwali and reinforce the work we have already done in Hinduism. We listened to a story, danced and created lanterns.
Today, we looked at items that are used to create a puja tray. We talked about why these items are important to Hindus and how they are used in daily worship. The children worked very hard and remembered lots of new words.
Yesterday we celebrated Eid. They produced beautiful posters related to how Eid has changed over the last 150 years (linked to our 150th school celebration).
Today the children have enjoyed coming to school in their own clothes to celebrate Eid.
Thank you to our parent volunteers, hennaliverpool.com and Hennabyinaaya for helping us to celebrate Eid Al-Ahad.
To culminate our learning on religious festivals, we thought about reflective questions and used all our learning to answer with our own opinion. We were respectful and 3TS gave some fabulous mature responses.
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We made our own information leaflets to explain all about the festival / celebration of Eid.
Lovely to see all our children dressed up for Eid. Lots of families have been fasting through Ramadan and have had a lovely few days celebrating Eid.
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Today, the children acted out the story ‘Daniel and the Lion’s Den’
Our Nativity Slideshow.
Thank you all for coming to watch. We loved performing for you.
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In R.E. today, we learnt about the Hindu belief in AHIMSA – non-harm. We learnt about Ghandi and discussed what some of his quotes meant.
We think some of these mosque pictures are incredible！We drew them as part of our RE unit which includes learning about ‘Ummah’ as part of the Islam religion.
We’re now in the Islam section of our RE unit and we are learning all about the sense of community and how the mosque plays an important part in bringing the community together. We took the opportunity to utilise our artistic skills too.
In RE we looked at the difference between a Christian’s daily timetable and our daily timetables. We discovered some similarities and some differences.
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Thank you to our wonderful visitors for speaking to us about Diwali. We loved our workshop.
Year 4 had such a great morning at our Diwali workshop. We wore some traditional Hindu clothing, learned some traditional dance, and even got to paint and create our own diya lanterns.
We are having so much fun making our Diwali lanterns with rangoli patterns.
We have really enjoyed learning about the celebration of Diwali this week. We are very excited to see our lanterns lit for our Diwali lunch tomorrow
Today, year 3 had a workshop based around Diwali. The children enjoyed learning about this celebration. They learned how it called ‘the festival of lights’ and created their own pieces of art that candle lights are placed in. We got to dress up and took part in a traditional Diwali dance.
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Today we are designing our Diwali lanterns for next week. We have learnt the story of Rama and Sita and thought about why Diwali is celebrated in Hindu religion. We are trying to focus on using Rangoli patterns.
Year 6 had some special visitors today who helped us to learn about the Hindu festival of Diwali. We looked at traditional food, special dress and other forms of celebration which take place. Most of all, we loved the dressing up and the dancing!
Year 4 had a very exciting morning visiting a local temple. We asked lots of questions related to our Hinduism unit.
we learned about reincarniation and how Muslims believe if you have good Moksha you will be reborn, if you don’t you will come back as an animal.
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Your art work was impressive in RE this week! Well done Year 2
We have completed our ‘Good Guy Codes for Living / How to be a Good Guy’ in RE. We made suggestions on actions and behaviour we can display to make the world a better place.
Within our RE unit of ‘What Matters Most To Christians and Humanists’ we talked about villains – What villains do we know? What makes a villain a villain? We then looked at positive and negative behaviour and consequences in school, at home and in society. We followed this up by designing our own ‘Good Guy Codes for Living’ which we are still working on.
As part of our new topic we shared special things from home. We explained why they are special and what they mean to us.
Happy Eid to all our families celebrating! We had a lovely day and week celebrating with all our children and adults.
We have been practicing our throwing and catching skills in a group. We worked together to see how quickly we can move the beanbag around the circle.
After learning about Mosques, we followed step by step instructions to create our own geometric Islamic patterns. Now they are designed, we are going to colour. How symmetrical can we make them? ?
As part of our unit (Grace, Ummah and Ahimsa), we learnt a little about Ghandi, and how he protested peacefully against wrongs and injustices. We then used some key words to present in his name.
Reception had a wonderful morning listening to the story of Noah and the Ark
As part of our RE unit, we are finding out about mosques around the world and presenting our findings in Google Slides.
We started our new Christianity topic by looking at Christian symbols and artefacts. Christians believe God has many titles so we thought about the different labels we have.
We have been learning all about the festival of Diwali this week. We made Diwa decorations and cards for Diwali. We also found how Diwali is celebrated and how Diwali means Festival of Light.
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As part of our Diwali celebrations, Year 6 made lanterns displaying the symbols of, not only Hinduism, but other religions of the world too.
We really had interesting ideas about the responses of each of the characters in the story of The Good Samaritan and related situations to everyday life.
3TS explored the Puja in R.E. then moved onto some tricky rolling in gymnastics. Well done! @SmithdownPrimY3 #smithdownpe #smithdownre
First day back for me today and a lovely day spent with @SmithdownPrimY2 counting and discussing precious items important to us @misshath2 #smithdownre
Year 2 have worked so hard to share the Jewish creation story with each other this week #smithdownre
On Friday we celebrated Rosh Hashanah by eating apple dipped in honey #smithdownre
Today we explored an adult Bible and children’s Bible. The Bible is the special Christian Holy Book #smithdownre
B-tales shared the story of
