What are the attitudes that we want to foster in the RE student? How do these fit into the thinking and learning approaches in our classroom? Are you planning lessons that allow these to come to the fore or do you lessons promote different sort of attitudes?

Here are some attitudes that you might want from your students:

• Respect
• Thoughtfulness
• Open-Mindedness
• Rigour
• Critical Reasoning
• Tolerance
• Adaptable
• Self-motivated
• Independent Learners
• Robust
• Secure in own beliefs
• Open to change

What would you want to add to this list? Why not ask your students what the key attitudes in RE are?

You should also look at the films on the NATRE website.

The new curriculum has some core areas of skills [Functional Skills] which are the responsibility of all subjects to develop. These are:

• Literacy - more
• Numeracy - more
• ICT - more
• Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills - more

Whilst it is important for you to consider the ways in which you are developing these you must also not try to force skills into the curriculum.

What are the "big ideas" that RE has to contribute? You might argue that there are no bigger ideas that the idea of god or gods but this is also for you to consider the areas that RE has to offer that make a significant or unique contribution to the curriculum. Why should RE exist in the curriculum space? Some thoughts are:

• The consideration of our place in the world
• Relationships with others
• Moral Responsibility
• Ethical Responsibility
• The development of a personal belief framework
• Living with differences
• Spiritual Intelligence
• Harmony with the natural world
• Consideration of life beyond death and life beyond this life

What would you want to add to this list? Why not ask your students what the the big ideas in RE are?

You should also look at the films on the NATRE website.