Last updated:

31st October 2023

Crossing the bridges project

Supporting partnership working between schools and places of worship

Teachers often report that communicating with places of worship about taking children to visit, or about inviting speakers into RE lessons, is a difficult process. Ensuring the appropriateness of speakers and the relevance of the visits is also a challenge. Yet there is so much rich learning to be gained from first-hand experience of visits and visitors.

The pan-Berkshire SACRE Hub gained pump-priming funding from the Culham St Gabriel’s Trust to launch a project to bring together places of worship and schools, facilitate communication and enhance learning.

The outcomes of this project to date regarding administration are:

  • Information page template for places of worship to complete, enabling teachers to have contact details and information regarding content of visits and visitor input
  • Booking form
  • Host feedback form
  • School feedback form

Further to this we developed an interactive teaching/learning booklet which can be used for any place of worship and any age group: ‘An enquiry approach to visiting places of worship’. Teachers give children an enquiry question to investigate during the visit and children have encounters during the visit; people, symbols, features of the building etc. These encounters are used to build knowledge and answer the enquiry question. The interactive template booklet is available below along with sample booklets to illustrate how it can be used when studying Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism.

The pan-Berkshire SACRE Hub is pleased to share this work with schools and invite teachers to download the materials for their own use, at no charge.

We hope these materials make teachers’ planning easier and enhance children’s RE learning.

Documents