Basket Your basket is empty

Outline of a typical day

Barnabas RE Days can offer a full day’s programme to your school to explore Christianity creatively with primary-aged children through storytelling, drama or music, according to the skills of the Barnabas Schools' Team member (we do offer a half day's programme for small schools - see the FAQs page for details).

A Barnabas RE Day can run in a variety of ways. When making a booking, you will need to consider:

Themes

We usually offer a maximum of 2 themes in any one Barnabas RE Day. You may choose to follow the same theme with all classes or choose different themes for KS1 and KS2.

Space

We always need a large space (such as a school hall) so that groups can move around as part of the dramatic storytelling. Classroom settings normally don't allow for this. If your school uses its main hall for serving lunches, then this can impact on the time available (due to setting up for lunches and clearing away afterwards), although your Barnabas Schools' Team member may be able to run the concluding part of a morning's workshop in a classroom.

Timetable

The longer the sessions, the more opportunities your pupils will have for activity and discussion. We usually find that 45-60 minutes is the optimum amount of time for a varied mix of games, drama and storytelling enabling pupils to explore the given theme.

However, this necessarily means providing fewer class sessions. Most schools opt for four class sessions in a day, which seems to be the optimum for those aged 8-11, although sessions for younger children may be shorter. Some primary schools book two Barnabas RE Days together to enable all pupils to make the most of the opportunity.

For example, this timetable allows 4 junior classes to each have around 60 minutes each.

Sample timetable 1
Time Group Content Location
09.00 Whole school Assembly School hall
09.30 Year 3 Workshop - Who am I? School hall
10.30 Break N/A N/A
10.45 Year 4 Workshop - Who am I? School hall
12.15 Lunch N/A N/A
13.00 Year 5 Workshop - Who is my neighbour? School hall
14.00 Year 6 Workshop - Who is my neighbour? School hall

This second alternative has shorter sessions - which may suit younger children better than older pupils. However, the lunchtime allowed is much shorter - and Year 3 may not be able to use the hall.

Sample timetable 2
Time Group Content Location
09.00 Whole school Assembly School hall
09.30 Reception Workshop - Who am I? School hall
10.00 Year 1 Workshop - Who am I? School hall
10.30 Break N/A
 N/A
10.45 Year 2 Workshop - Who am I? School hall
11.30 Year 3 Workshop - Who am I? School hall
12.15 Lunch N/A N/A
13.00 Year 4 Workshop - Who is my neighbour? School hall
13.45 Year 5 Workshop - Who is my neighbour? School hall
14.30 Year 6 Workshop - Who is my neighbour? School hall

Each school should negotiate their requirements with their relevant Barnabas Schools' Team member. Use of the 'large space' (such as the school hall) should be negotiated with senior staff and written into the school diary as soon as possible, to prevent problems arising on the day.

Please note: