Computing
Why computing matters:
The teaching of computing is crucial in supporting children to develop into responsible digital citizens, learning to stay safe online. Computing is a rigorous academic discipline of great importance to the future careers of many pupils. Pupils who understand computing will be able to use computational thinking and creativity to change the world.
The study of computing in our school enables us to realise our vision of life in all its fullness by:
Growth: We highlight real world examples of ICT in potential employment and inspire children to aim for careers which harness their creativity.
Integrity and Growth: children collaborate on projects regularly and are encouraged to work with their peers to solve problems along the way; rather than asking adults to fix them for them. This level of challenge builds strong interpersonal skills as children listen to each other and make adaptations to their original plans.
Kindness and Joy: children are encouraged to experiment and take risks in lessons; work is shared and celebrated with their peers and tasks are often open-ended to allow children room to explore freely.
How we deliver it:
Specific skills to be taught in the areas of coding, digital literacy and online safety are planned sequentially for each year group and build throughout the school. Digital literacy activities are planned in a range of curriculum areas in order for children to develop their safe and effective use of technology for research, presentation and manipulation of information. We use the scheme ‘Teach Computing’, but lessons are adapted by teachers to meet the needs of the class.
Topics are revisited and revised based on class and individual children’s ability. Topics taught across the year groups are as follows:
Responsible online citizenship: Promoting the SMART rules to ensure internet safety awareness.
Programming, debugging and coding: Rich opportunities for problem solving and creativity using sites such as https://code.org/ and https://scratch.mit.edu/
Web design: Teaching research and planning skills and designing visual layouts, using knowledge from other curriculum areas for the content.
Stop motion animation
Word processing and Presentation Software: Developing the use of word processing (Google Docs/Word) and sequential presentation software (google slides/powerpoint)
Music production within online sequencing software: Inspiring those who otherwise might notconnect with ICT based learning.
Classes are accompanied by an online Google Classroom topic and assignment for children to refer back to throughout. These contain both the minimum expectations and suggestions for demonstrating greater depth. This also serves as an area for children to submit work for review and appraisal.
How we know we are doing it well:
Children will keep online learning logs of the different activities and sequences of learning they take part in.
Children’s portfolios of evidence will include their scratch projects and other digital records, which are shared with the class teacher through Google Classroom and Google Drive.
The subject leader will keep abreast of latest developments in the subject through network meetings with local leaders and will adapt and develop practice accordingly.