Our Primary School Religious Education Curriculum:
Primary Education
The Catholic Preschool and Primary Religious Education Curriculum for Ireland (2015) was approved by the Irish Episcopal Conference and granted the Decree of Recognitio by the Holy See in 2015. It is the curriculum from which Grow in Love, a Religious Education series for Catholic primary schools, is written.
The aim of the Catholic Preschool and Primary Religious Education Curriculum is: ‘To help children mature in relation to their spiritual, moral and religious lives, through their encounter with, exploration and celebration of the Catholic faith’.
The content of this curriculum is divided into four interrelated strands: Christian Faith; Word of God; Liturgy and Prayer; and Christian Morality. Together, these four strands outline the knowledge and understanding, skills and processes that make up the learning to be achieved at each level of the curriculum. The curriculum also outlines skills of religious literacy which should be developed in students from preschool right up to sixth class. These are divided into five categories: understanding, communicating, participating, developing spiritual literacy and developing inter-religious literacy.
Conscious of the needs of teachers working with children with moderate, severe and profound general learning disabilities, the Catholic Preschool and Primary Religious Education Curriculum also includes Guidelines for teachers in Special Schools. The Catholic Preschool and Primary Religious Education Curriculum for Ireland is an important document for every primary school teacher.
This Curriculum is for use in all primary school under the patronage of the Bishop of Cloyne.
To view the Curriculum please go to the downloads section.
Our Primary School Religious Education Programme:
The current primary school religious education programme in our Catholic primary schools is Grow in Love. It is an Irish Bishops Conference publication. It is published by Veritas Publications.
Its introduction into primary schools takes place for Junior and Senior Infants in 2015, for 1st and 2nd classes in 2016, for 3rd and 4th classes in 2017, and for 5th and 6th classes in 2018. Grow in Love is based on the Catholic Preschool and Primary Religious Education Curriculum. It replaces the Alive-O series, which was first introduced to primary schools in 1996.
Each Grow in Love programme is divided into a number of themes, which allow teachers to take a thematic, cross-curricular approach to the teaching of Religious Education. Each theme is designed to last between two and four weeks. As well as the Teacher’s Notes and photocopiable worksheets featured in the Teacher’s Manual, a comprehensive set of online resources are available for the classroom, including illustrations to accompany every story, video clips and weblinks for further study.Grow in Love makes the essential link with home every week by including an “At Home” exercise in the student text book.
Every year, Information meetings take place all in every deanery to support our primary school teachers in their work.