COMPUTING
Subject Co-ordinator: Mrs E Simmons & Miss A White
Link Governor: Mrs Ouassa
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Check out our coverage documents to see what the children will be learning in our Computing curriculum, term by term. |
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Intent Our five key drivers underpin our Computing curriculum:
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At Coldean our aim is for pupils to be enthusiastic, skilled, safe and socially responsible users of digital technologies: able to apply their knowledge to, and in turn, change the rapidly evolving digital world.
It is our intention that pupils become more expert as they progress through the curriculum, accumulating and connecting declarative and procedural computing knowledge.
- Declarative knowledge- this is the subject knowledge and explicit vocabulary used to learn about the content. It consists of facts, rules and principles and the relationships between them. It can be described as ‘knowing that.’
- Procedural knowledge– this is knowledge of methods or processes that can be performed. “It can be described as knowing how”1. t is through procedural knowledge that children gradually become more expert in their computational thinking and as creative, safe users of ICT.
Pupils develop their knowledge, skills and understanding of the key aspects of digital literacy, information technology and computer science, ensuring that they have learned the knowledge required to meet the aims of:
- National Curriculum for Computing (DfE, 2013)
- Education for a Connected World (UKCCIS, 2020)
- Teaching Online safety in Schools (DfE, 2019)
Through this they learn essential knowledge including password safety, creating digital documents, protecting themselves online, saving and retrieving work, designing and coding programs, problem-solving and digital design.
Central to our Computing curriculum is computer science, in which pupils are taught the principles of information and computational thinking. This demands that pupils develop not only practical coding skills but also their resilience, logical thinking, problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
They apply their knowledge and skills with information technology to support and enhance their learning across the wider curriculum.
We offer our pupils a breadth of experience to develop their understanding of themselves as individuals within their community but also members of a wider global community as a responsible digital citizen.
We aim to ensure that pupils become digitally literate – able to use, and express themselves and develop their ideas through, information and communication technology – at a level suitable for the future workplace and as active participants in a digital world.Implementation
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Implementation Our Computing curriculum is based upon the scheme of learning designed by Purple Mash and supplemented with online safety resources from eCadets, Child Net and the UK Safer Internet Centre. It is comprised of three aspects: Digital Literacy, Information Technology and Computational Thinking. These aspects are organised into seven strands: key skills, multimedia, coding & computational thinking, computers & networks, online safety, spreadsheets & graphing and databases to ensure that pupils’ knowledge, skills and understanding is built upon through successive years towards clearly identified year group learning outcomes. Wherever possible activities are linked to year group topics to provide further engagement and purposeful learning. Challenge, support and independence are provided through the use of Purple Mash 2Dos, which lead children through carefully structured lesson activities. In addition, our well-trained staff enhance provision still further through direct and guided support, pre-teaching and setting additional challenge where appropriate. Wherever possible learning in computing is linked to overall topics to enable children to add new learning to increasingly complex schemata that demonstrate the inter-relatedness of curriculum content. Our computing curriculum respects the interplay between using information and communication technologies to enhance our lives with the dangers and responsibilities of their use. To ensure our curriculum is taught to develop cumulatively sufficient knowledge by the end of each Key Stage we follow the stages outlined below:
In Reception and Key Stage 1, children are taught to use access online resources, save and retrieve their work, program a Beebot and use ICT purposefully to communicate their ideas and to support their problem solving, recording and expressive skills. In Key Stages 1 and 2, every child receives one hour of Computing provision a week. Additionally, we have banks of laptops, cameras and audio recorders that children regularly use to enhance their learning experiences across the curriculum. Computing skills are taught both explicitly and implicitly when supporting other areas of learning across the school. In Key Stage 2, our children extend their use of Computing for communication, investigation and programming and work to understand how to communicate safely and responsibly. Key Stage 2 pupils can become eCadets, receiving regular coaching to be online safety experts. They devise, plan and deliver lessons covering aspects of Digital Literacy to their class and present in assemblies. They complete three teaching challenges each term ranging from Copyright to Screen Time, Online Friendships to Live Streaming. Our planned curriculum for digital literacy including Online Safety was updated in-line with DfE (2019) Teaching Online Safety in Schools. It is broad in covering a range of issues including understanding current issues such as ‘fake news’, ‘influencing’ and ‘ad targeting’. Staff receive regular training through the National Online Safety programme and enhance their understanding of key aspects of the Computing curriculum. Parents are able to access a wealth of Online Safety materials to support their children at home. Most recently staff training has focused on the use of high-quality remote learning through the use of Google Classroom. |
Impact
Our Computing curriculum ensures that children leave Coldean:
- Knowledgeable, confident and creative users of a range of digital technologies.
- Equipped with the knowledge and skills to access the next stage of their learning, with a clear understanding of how quickly this knowledge will evolve.
- Able to apply their knowledge and skills in utilising information technologies to communicate their ideas to a range of audiences.
- Responsible digital users, able to explain how our SMART rules enable them to stay safe online. This is evidenced through our monitoring of the online spaces and platforms provided by the school e.g. Purple Mash, Google Classroom,
- Fully aware of the risks of using digital technologies and measure they can take to mitigate against these risks.
Training, planning and teaching our Computing curriculum should ensure:
Knowledgeable and skilful teachers able to formatively assess pupils’ learning through analysis of Purple Mash learning tasks (2Dos) Each unit has a planned outcome that assesses pupils’ new learning against our Progression Map objectives.