Experiential RE supdocs.indd - SfE

Sue Phillips
Sue teaches at Bognor Regis Community College in West Sussex where she is Head of RE,
Professional Tutor and an Advanced Skills Teacher working on in reach within her own school. In
her AST role Sue supports a number of departments through coaching and mentoring. A trained
counsellor, she delivers CPD on communication skills together with multi sensory learning and
assessment.
Over the past ten years she has developed an approach to RE which she calls the Theatre of
Learning.
Pupils work, using music, in circles within and around huge multi-sensory sets representing
whatever aspect of the religious tradition she is teaching. The active and experiential activities
which take place in the Theatre of Learning enable pupils to develop their own spirituality,
empathise with beliefs and practices different from their own and promote high quality written
work, enabling and inspiring pupils to write up to level eight. The techniques of the Theatre of
Learning can be adapted to any programme of study and any age range and are being used by
teachers in both primary school and to teach sixth form.
Sue now demonstrates the techniques of the Theatre of Learning in courses she runs regularly in
her own classroom for teachers on the south coast and, as time permits, at venues around the
country.
In schools where Theatre of Learning is being used, the techniques have transformed motivation,
behaviour and recruitment to GCSE, improved examination results and enabled teachers to
experience more job satisfaction and fulfilment as their own creativity and spirituality is developed
alongside that of their pupils.
Sue has an international reputation through her presentations at the International Conference on
Children’s Spirituality and her writing in their journal. She has written a chapter for an international
handbook on RE and spirituality to be published in Australia later this year. She has demonstrated
her work at the National Symposium of Religious Education in Australia and New Zealand and
presented Theatre of Learning in RE and Citizenship throughout Australia to teachers in the
Catholic and Lutheran church in August 2006.
Articles on Theatre of Learning have appeared in the TES, the SHAP Journal for World Religions,
RE Today and the International Journal for Children’s Spirituality.
A series of five teacher resource files containing lesson recipes for all aspects of RE are available
from SfE - samples can be viewed on the website www.sfe.co.uk/theatreoflearning.
Sue can be contacted at njphillips@supanet.com
18 Experiential RE: Supporting documents