To Know You More Clearly

Religious Education Overview

At St Stephen’s, from September 2025, to fulfil our aims and objectives, all classes will use the ‘To Know You More Clearly’ programme from the new Religious Education Directory prescribed by the Archdiocese of Liverpool.

The programme of study for Religious Education in Catholic schools presented in ‘To Know You More Clearly’ has a framework with four structural elements:

1. Knowledge Lenses
2. Ways of Knowing
3. Expected Outcomes
4. Curriculum Branches

Knowledge lenses set out the object of study for pupils; they indicate what should be known by the end of each age-phase. They are referred to as lenses, since they are the areas that we are looking at and they divide the content of the programme of study into four systematic subsections for the study of Catholicism and two additional lenses for the study of religious and worldviews.

The study of Catholic religion lenses are:

• Hear
• Believe
• Celebrate
• Live

The study of other religious and worldviews lenses are:

• Dialogue
• Encounter

Ways of knowing set out the skills that pupils should be developing as they progress through their curriculum journey. Whenever we know something, we always know it in more than one way: we remember it, we critically assimilate it and we put it into practice. All three are ways of coming to know the things that are the object of our study. The Ways of Knowing are an evolution of the age-related standards in Religious Education.
The three Ways of Knowing are:

• Understand – head – see – what will I see and hear to help me understand?
• Discern– heart – judge – how will I discover more?
• Respond– hands – act – what can I do now?

​Expected Outcomes are a synthesis of the content outlined in the Knowledge Lenses and the skills described in the Ways of Knowing. Each age-phase will have a prescribed set of outcomes that will indicate what pupils are expected to know, remember and be able to do, using the language of the Ways of Knowing and applying it to the discrete knowledge within each lens.

Curriculum Branches are the way this programme of study presents its model curriculum. The model curriculum presents the expected outcomes in six curriculum branches that correspond to the six half-terms of a school year. The model curriculum is rooted in the narrative of salvation history and leads pupils on a journey in each year of schooling that gives a sequence to the learning. As they revisit each branch in each year of school they come to a deeper understanding of its significance for Catholic belief and practice, which allows them to make links between the four Knowledge Lenses within the context of the narrative of salvation history.
The six curriculum branches are:

1. Creation and Covenant
2. Prophecy and Promise
3. From Galilee to Jerusalem
4. From Desert to Garden
5. To the Ends of the Earth
6. Dialogue and Encounter