Computing
Intent
At St Wilfrid’s, our broad and balanced curriculum is ambitious and carefully designed to give all pupils, with a particular emphasis on those who are disadvantaged or with SEND, the knowledge and skills that they need to take advantage of opportunities, responsibilities and experiences in later life. It is deliberately planned and sequenced so that the end points that it is building towards are clear and that pupils develop knowledge and skills, directly linking to what has been taught before (through the ‘Power Pyramid’), to be able to reach those end points. The end points are evidenced through carefully tracked outcomes and assessments. Pupils learn the knowledge that they need to answer subject-specific questions and are able to practically demonstrate and apply the cyclical skills that they acquire, supported by meaningful links between subjects. Pupils make good progress due to the expert knowledge of subject leaders and teachers, ensuring pupils know and remember more.
The computing curriculum aims to arm children with the knowledge to become socially responsible digital citizens. We want children to recognise that technology can support and enhance many different aspects of life and learning. We also aim to make children aware that as participants in the digital world, being digitally literate gives huge advantages to many (arguably all!) future workplaces. We want children to have strong knowledge of the principles of computation and digital systems in order to apply this knowledge when programming.
We aim to give children a wide variety of experiences using different programmes. We want children to be able to creatively use their computational thinking to solve problems and develop their understanding of the world around them.
We hope to combine the aspects of computing knowledge and the application of this through information technology to show children the transformative power of technology. It is also essential that children know how to keep safe when using technology in order for them to delve into the digital world safely and responsibly.
We recognise the ever-increasing importance of digital literacy and the strong need to prepare children to become versatile and independent users of technology.
Implementation
At St Wilfrids we teach discrete computing lessons using Purple Mash. Strands of learning link and build between year groups. Some areas of Computing are also taught through teachers' own planning using Microsoft programmes that will prepare children for secondary school and beyond! We also make sure that computing is linked to a variety of other subjects helping children to recognise when digital systems can be utilised to improve learning. From photography to Excel, children are given the opportunity to apply their knowledge. We also celebrate national e-safety day and have special assemblies to reinforce the learning of digital citizenship and safety.
‘KS1 coding: Can you debug the code?’
