Religious Studies

• The GCSE course starts in Y9 and this year students will enter in Y10

The Religions

• Students will study the key beliefs, teachings and religious practices of Christianity and Buddhism

The Themes –Philosophy and Ethics

• We look at a range of philosophical and ethical issues from religious and secular view points

• The religions we apply to the themes are Christianity and Buddhism

• We also consider non-religious views

Ethics

We study units on:

• Issues relating to the environment and stewardship

• Animal Rights – for example looking at issues surrounding animal test

• Medical Ethics – the ethics of abortion, euthanasia

• War – just war theory, pacifism

Philosophy

• Philosophical arguments for and against God's existence, e.g.

• Critical analysis of miracles

• Life after death

• The problem Evil and suffering holds for theists

• The ‘Religion and Science’ debate

Learning and Assessment • We will spend a lot of time in debate and discussion and group

work

• Through-out the course students will write essays, undertake independent research and participate in group presentations.

• They will sit an exam for each unit which is externally marked and will determine their grade.

Each exam will be 1 hour and 45mins

Paper 1 – Religions – Christianity and Buddhism

Paper 2 – ‘Themes’ – ethical and philosophical Themes in which students will need to display their knowledge of the Christian, Buddhist and secular views on the range of issues specified earlier

How can you help?

• Encourage students to be aware of ethical issues round them – e.g. recent cases on euthanasia, proposed changes to the abortion law, the hunt for the ‘God particle’ – these are all areas we will discuss and often lessons can be usefully enhanced by students who have brought in interesting case studies.

Revision of Units • A range of independent tasks will be set over this year to

cover elements of the course. • Before exams students will receive revision sheets -

encourage mind mapping, revision cards etc.. prior to exams

• BBC Bite size has some useful material – ensure they are looking a topics and religions that we have studied!

• Read their answers – if they don’t make sense to you the chances are they won’t make sense to an examiner!

• There are currently no revision guides that I would recommend and I will produce materials to support revision. If and when publishers produce suitable materials for the new GCSE I will of course let students know.