COMPUTING
Computing prepares pupils to participate in a digital world in which work and other activities are increasingly transformed by access to varied and developing technology. Pupils use ICT tools to find, explore, analyse, exchange and present information responsibly, creatively and with discrimination. They learn how to employ computing to enable rapid access to ideas, information and experiences from a range of sources, people, communities and cultures. Increased capability in the use of computing promotes initiative and independent learning, with pupils being able to make informed judgements about when and where to use computing to best effect, and to consider its implications for home and work both now and in the future.
At Claypole CE Primary School we acknowledge that computing and e-learning makes a massive contribution to all aspects of school life, for pupils, staff, governors, parents and the wider community, in this ever changing technological world. We believe that all children should be given opportunities to engage in a broad computing curriculum that ensures they are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology. We are well equipped with IT infrastructure including laptop trollies, iPads and interactive whiteboards in all classrooms.
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.
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:
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.
Our computing curriculum is based upon the scheme of learning designed by Google and supplemented with online safety resources from Teach Computing, 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.
Wherever possible learning in computing is linked to class themes 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 IT 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.
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’.
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Our Computing curriculum ensures that children leave Claypole:
Coding - web links