Computing Manager: Miss Burgess 

burgl134@mastacademy.co.uk

Intent

At All Saints we understand that technology is everywhere and will play an important part in students' lives. We aim to deliver high-quality teaching and learning across the curriculum to enable all children to achieve their personal best and to become independent users of computing technologies, gaining confidence and enjoyment from their activities. We develop a curriculum that is accessible to every child regardless of age or stage and promote inclusion throughout the curriculum. We provide a supportive environment for all children to flourish in a range of different activities to promote their digital critical thinking, as well as their technical skills. We promote the use of technology safely, respectfully and responsibly. This gives students a sense of enjoyment in their learning, as well as preparing them with the skills and knowledge for the next stages of their education, and life in modern Britain.

Implementation

At All Saints C of E Primary, computing is provided through our Cornerstones Curriculum. Cornerstones offers fantastic, interesting projects intended to engage all children into every subject. We also have explicit computing lessons which may be used to ensure the children have the digital literacy skills needed for a task. Computing is taught throughout a series of topics across year groups following the National curriculum.

• Our learning is linked across the curriculum (allowing children to practise their skills for a variety of purposes and audiences) through things such as:
  • Research
  • Presentations
  • creating digital content about a topic
• We monitor progress of the children through regular assessment
• we ensure that every lesson taught within school contains a challenge for the children to complete to extend and expand upon their main learning.
• Any children that we identify as needing to catch up will be offered intervention and support to ensure they make progress with their peers.

As a school, our curriculum is designed to meet the needs of the children and is therefore adapted and changed according to the needs, skills and abilities of the children, to keep the teaching and learning relevant in a technologically advancing world.

Impact

At All Saints C of E Primary School, the staff have high expectations of all children and believe every child can achieve their best. Because of this and the curriculum we offer, the children are competent and safe users of computing with an understanding of how technology works. They are resilient, have the skills to express themselves and are confident when faced with challenges. Our children enjoy learning and understand how they can keep themselves safe online by showing tolerance and mutual respect for others. We ensure that our Computing curriculum is progressive and inclusive as it allows children to develop fundamental skills and equips all pupils to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world. As stated in the national curriculum:

…Computing has deep links with mathematics, science, and design and technology, and provides insights into both natural and artificial systems….

…Computing also ensures 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….

We aim for all Year 6 pupils to leave school with digital literacy and confidence in both using technologies for work and study, but also understanding the science and systems behind it, as active participants of a digital world.

Computing in our school curriculum 

Long-term planning follows a two-year cycle allowing mixed year group classes to access the full National Curriculum without the unnecessary repeating of content.    

The schools newly adopted Cornerstones curriculum uses carefully chosen themes that enable teachers to deliver a specific set of skills each year. We also incorporate the Barefoot computing lessons within cornerstones and a discrete computing scheme of work designed to allow the children to develop technical and reasoning skills around computing and computer science.  

The content delivered in each year group is planned to build upon prior learning experienced previously. This planned progression ensures that children are increasingly challenged as they move further up through the school.  

Computing contributes to teaching and learning in all curriculum areas. For example, children use computing in mathematics and science to collect data, make predictions, analyse results and present information graphically. Graphics work links in closely with work in art, the Internet proves very useful for research in humanities subjects. Computing is a major contributor to the teaching of English. Work can be published for an audience on the school’s website. Children learn how to edit and revise text. They have to develop their writing skills by communicating with people over the Internet, and they are able to join in discussions with other children throughout the world through the medium of video conferencing. They learn how to improve the presentation of their work by using desk-top publishing software.    

Computing enables the children to present their information and conclusions in the most appropriate way, and move forwards to becoming global citizens in a technological world. 

How to support the learning of Computing at home.

A great way to help children to understand Coding is to do activities that involve following instructions.

The Barefoot website is great for this and computers aren’t needed to complete the activities.

Click on this link https://www.barefootcomputing.org/homelearning

 See the ‘Learning Together’ section at the bottom of the homepage for lots of activities.
 

UK Safer Internet Centre have produced an informative film - How can parents talk to children about their online lives?

https://saferinternet.org.uk/blog/film-how-can-parents-talk-to-children-about-their-online-lives

The NSPCC have good advice about staying safe online and guidance for parents on how to talk to their children about this topic.

https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/online-safety/

Useful Computing Websites

Computing Club

Previously, we have hosted a KS2 computing club for children from year 3 to year 6. We had 16 spaces available and the response was so amazing, Miss Burgess is thinking about running it again in the Summer!

The children have learned how to code instructions using Scratch and have worked collaboratively to problem solve and find solutions. Every has had amazing fun and is excited to carry on their learning in the future.