Computing

“I think it's fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we've ever created. They're tools of communication, they're tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.”  Bill Gates 

Vision Statement

For every child to become digitally literate by being able to independently use, express themselves and develop their ideas safely through information and communication technology and progress as an active participant in an ever evolving digital world. The children should be online-safe, online-inspired and online-confident.

We strongly believe that high quality Computing learning inspires children to be innovative learners. At St. Joseph’s Catholic Primary School, we believe that Computing is a gateway to understanding how technology is woven into the fabric of life and how that both impacts and enriches our pupils’ lives providing a wealth of learning opportunities and transferable skills.

The Computing curriculum is engaging and meaningful, ensuring that it is inclusive for all pupils. In addition, our curriculum develops pupils’ communication skills by learning how to keep themselves safe online through being able to recognise both the opportunities and threats posed.

Preparing our pupils for the digital world; unlocking their potential

Computing Statement of Intent

Through our computing curriculum at St. Joseph’s, we aim to give our pupils the life-skills that will enable them to embrace and utilise new technology in a socially responsible and safe way in order to flourish. We want our pupils to be enthusiastic and able to operate in the ever-changing technological world where work and leisure activities are increasingly transformed by technology. In the 21st century workplace, we want them to know the career opportunities that will be open to them if they study computing.  We want children to become autonomous, independent users of computing technologies, gaining confidence and enjoyment from their activities focusing on skills such as finding, exploring, analysing, exchanging and presenting information. We want the use of technology to support learning across the entire curriculum and to ensure that our curriculum is accessible to every child including those with special educational needs and disability and those identified as more able. Not only do we want them to be digitally literate and competent end-users of technology, but through our computer science lessons, we want them to develop wider skills such as creativity, resilience, problem-solving and critical thinking.  Our ambition is that all our pupils have a breadth of experience to develop their understanding of themselves as individuals within their community, but also as members of a wider global community and as responsible digital citizens. We believe that all have the ability to achieve their best and our curriculum and varied choice of pedagogy enables all children to do this.

Computing Statement of Implementation

At St. Joseph’s, computing is taught in discrete computing lessons as well as permeated throughout the curriculum. The scheme of work forms a starting point for the planning of the computing lessons, which are often richly linked to engaging contexts in other subjects and topics. Every lesson in our scheme has been individually planned so that it can be effectively taught using the infrastructure we have in place at school and so that it can meet the needs of all our pupils. Our scheme has been closely referenced against the 2014 National Curriculum attainment targets in order to ensure progression and coverage. Having discrete lessons means that the children are able to develop depth in their knowledge and skills over the duration of each of their computing topics. We use a range of pedagogical practices in the teaching of computing to ensure that we are successful with our Intent. This can range from small group tasks, individual tasks to whole class tasks. We focus on teacher modelling, expert questioning that gives children memorable experiences and provide over-learning to ensure that key knowledge is transferred to children's long- term memory.

Where appropriate, meaningful links will be made between the computing curriculum and the wider curriculum to reinforce knowledge. This results in building new skills and knowledge based upon what has been taught before, allowing all pupils to work towards clearly defined end points. For example, children in EYFS focus on their understanding of the world using technology. Key Stage 1 children learn what algorithms are, which leads them to the design stage of programming in Key Stage 2, where they design, write and debug programs, explaining the thinking behind their algorithms. In computing lessons, the children will use laptops, tablets and PCs either in class or using the STEM room in order to access a range of apps and software for many purposes across the wider curriculum, as well as in discrete computing lessons. Employing cross-curricular links motivates pupils and supports them to make connections and remember the steps they have been taught. Discrete computing lessons focus on the curriculum skills of information technology, digital literacy and computer science. Children’s progress will be assessed using internal tracking systems and they are given feedback and ways to improve their work verbally.

Computing Statement of Impact 

Our approach to the curriculum results in a fun, safe, engaging, and high-quality computing education. Evidence from childrens’ learning is used to feed into teachers’ future planning and as a topic-based approach continues to be developed, teachers are able to revisit misconceptions and knowledge gaps in computing when teaching other curriculum areas. This supports varied paces of learning and ensures all pupils make good progress. Much of the subject-specific knowledge developed in our computing lessons equip pupils with experiences which will benefit them in secondary school, further education and future workplaces. Alongside this, children will learn key vocabulary and should be able to recall this in everyday life. From research methods, use of presentation and creative tools and critical thinking, computing at St. Joseph’s gives children the building blocks that enable them to pursue a wide range of interests and vocations in the next stage of their lives.  

If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods: 

• A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes; 
• Children can understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms and data representation; 
• Children can analyse problems in computational terms, and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems;  
• Children can evaluate and apply information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems; 
• Children are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology; 
• A celebration of learning for each term which demonstrates progression across the school; 
• Tracking of children’s progress on in-house tracking system; 
• Pupil discussions about their learning 

When children leave St. Joseph’s, we want our children to be competent and safe users of technology with an understanding of how it works and impacts theirs and wider society’s lives. They will have developed skills to express themselves and be creative in using digital media and be equipped to apply their skills in Computing to different challenges going forward.