• A Hopeful school experience

    A Hopeful school experience

    Year 1 Undergraduates QTS students gained their first experience of school with a day at Hope Academy.  We were met in the foyer by Rachael Critchley (Head of RE), Catha Seddon (Assistant Head of RE) and Jayne Cantwell (A very experienced RE Curriculum Mentor) and given a tour of the school. We met the Head…

  • Back to the Sixth Form

    Back to the Sixth Form

    Final Year Undergraduate QTS students visited Carmel  College to discover how it is different to teach in a Sixth form college.  We were met by Sarah Daley, who is in charge of 10:10 RE, the general RE provision for all students, and a Glenn Skelhorn, who is in charge of the A Level Philosophy and…

  • GCSE Expertise

    GCSE Expertise

    Year 3 undergraduates visited Lowton CE High school to spend a day looking at teaching GCSE. Having battled through the traffic, we were met by Heather Clare, a very experienced RE teacher and Senior Teacher at the school. Our first task was to look at the Specification (From AQA) and decide what religions and themes…

  • Fieldwork in Religion: Going Out and Finding Out

    Fieldwork in Religion: Going Out and Finding Out

    This last week has been very busy for our undergraduate students, who have benefitted from meeting and engaging with local faith communities. Year 2 Ethnography students are currently engaged in their own fieldwork projects, exploring a range of topics including witchcraft, perspectives on the after life in a care home, life in a convent, challenges…

  • A Level Experience

    A Level Experience

    Year 3 undergraduate RE with QTS students spent a day at Haslingden High school, looking at how to teach A Level RS in a school with a sixth form.  Ben Wood the Head of RE and the Chair of NATRE welcomed us and offered us pastries and coffee! We then were able to observe a…

  • RE ITT Conference @ Stretford High

    RE ITT Conference @ Stretford High

    For another year the RE PGCE trainees were able to attend the ITT conference at one of our outstanding partnership schools, Stretford High  in Manchester. Trainees were involved in a range of sessions such as developing their teaching persona (led by Faisal Ahmed, Professional Mentor and Head of Humanities/Social Sciences Faculty),  interview hints and tips…

  • “Speaker’s Corner” in Jerusalem during the Second Temple Era

    “Speaker’s Corner” in Jerusalem during the Second Temple Era

    Today, as part of the new “Abrahamic Traditions” module, the first year students from both Secondary Religious Education + QTS and Education and Religion programmes participated in a roleplaying game reenacting different major religious groups that were current during the Second Temple period (roughly around 0 C.E.). The students were stunningly dressed in makeshift costumes…

  • Visit to Tübingen

    This summer I spent around ten days as a visiting lecturer at Centre for Islamic Theology the University of Tübingen, located on the edge of the beautiful and mysterious Black Forest in the German state of Baden-Württemberg. The University of Tübingen, now also known as Eberhard Karls University, was founded in 1477, and has a long-standing…

  • ‘Relationships for Learning’

    ‘Relationships for Learning’

    To support the Reflective Professional Practice lecture, RE PGCE trainees were able to benefit from the expertise of Dr Chris Greenough who, prior to joining Edge Hill,  was  SLT lead for behaviour, pastoral and ITT in his previous role. He was able to share his own experiences about the importance of ‘relationships for learning’ and…

  • PGCE RE: Pop Culture & the media in RE

    PGCE RE: Pop Culture & the media in RE

    PGCE trainees excelled at the opportunity to explore the links between pop culture in the media and RE, creating strategy posters which showed how contemporary films, songs and TV shows can be used in the classroom to engage pupils and deliver high quality RE. They created a whole range of resources and lessons which  included;…