Computing

OUR AIMS

We want our pupils to:

• Respect themselves, respect others, respect all property, and respect their community and the World around them.
• Have a positive attitude that encourages self-belief and confidence
• Achieve high standards in all areas of the curriculum.
• Respond to challenges and seize new experiences whole–heartedly.
• Take an active lead in their own learning and development throughout their life.
• Develop the spirit of enquiry leading to life-long learning.

OUR VISION FOR THIS SUBJECT

Our vision is to support children in becoming creative, independent learners and ensuring children have a healthy relationship with technology.

COMPUTING CURRICULUM INTENT  

To support children in becoming creative, independent learners and ensure they develop a healthy relationship with technology. At our school, we value and recognise the contribution that technology can make for the benefit of all pupils, staff, parents, governors and society. We strive to provide safe opportunities in computing to motivate, inspire and raise standards across the curriculum. Everyone in our school community will be equipped with the digital skills to meet developing technology with confidence, enthusiasm and prepare them for a future in an ever-changing world. 

We want our children to be creators and innovators not just mere consumers of digital content. The idea of the children as digital creators is what underpins our planning and computing units. Computing is a constantly evolving subject that involves solving complex problems, being able to collaborate with others, learn from mistakes and refine solutions.

Our computing curriculum has logical sequenced steps that will equip all children with the essential skills and knowledge they need to use technology safely and creatively across the curriculum. There is a strong emphasis on improving computing/digital vocabulary, core fundamental digital skills and computational concepts. children create their own digital learning journals that record their understanding and tell their own story of the content they create.

Here at our school we believe safety is paramount. We promote and model a balanced digital life, recognising that amongst the many positives that technology has to offer, risks exist and children need to be taught to manage their digital lives properly. We strive to model and educate our children to use technology creatively, positively, responsibly and safely.

COMPUTING CURRICULUM IMPLEMENTATION  

At Cheswick Green, the requirements of the Computing Curriculum are taught through half-termly units following the Knowsley Computing Scheme of Work and progression document.

The curriculum at our school is carefully mapped out to ensure that pupils acquire knowledge, vocabulary and skills in a well-thought out and progressive manner. New learning is based upon what has been taught before and prepares children for what they will learn next.  Every unit has a clear end point and an end product which children work towards on their learning journey. The teaching style that we adopt is as active and practical as possible although at times we do give children direct instruction on how to use hardware and software. We teach computing both discretely and cross curricular when clear links with other subjects are present.

Our Computing units and progression model is broken down into four strands that make up our computing curriculum. These are Essential Skills, Computer Science, Information Technology and Digital Literacy.

COMPUTING CURRICULUM IMPACT

In our Computing curriculum, the children revisit each objective several times, via different themes helping to ensure the best results are achieved. We use the ‘What to observe in learning’ grids to support the monitoring of our children’s learning expectations. Our school encourages discussions between staff and pupils to help the children best understand their progress and their next steps. We also encourage pupils to document their own learning in pupil journals. These journals can also be used to showcase and celebrate computing work as well as providing evidence of the pupil’s knowledge and digital skills.

We constantly monitor to ensure the children have learnt the things we’ve taught them and if they are struggling, we can introduce additional support the next time they encounter that objective. Impact is about how we know what you do is making a difference. If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress.

We measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods: 

• Pupil discussions and interviewing the pupils about their learning (pupil voice).
• Pupil journals and assessment/feedback on content creation.
• Moderation staff meetings with opportunities for dialogue between teachers.
• Photo evidence of the pupils practical learning.
• Video analysis through recording of performance or practical learning in lessons.
• Pupil self-reflection.
• A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes (progression/what to observe in learning).
• Learning walks and reflective staff feedback (teacher voice).
• Dedicated Computing leader time.
• Formative and summative approaches.

EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES IN COMPUTING          

Where children have a physical disability or have SEND, we aim to provide resources that will support their learning in Computing such as the use of specialist chairs and accessibility features (immersive reader, text to talk, screen filters to cut gaze, clear font type and size, appropriate contrast between text and background) and learning experiences responding to each child’s different needs that enable all pupils to make progress.

Teacher’s planning is differentiated to meet the range of needs in each class. A wide range of teaching and learning styles are employed to ensure all children are sufficiently challenged. Children may be required to work individually, in pairs or in small groups according to the nature of the task. Different outcomes may be expected depending on the ability and needs of the individual child. All resources/materials have been reviewed with equal opportunities in mind, e.g. race, gender, ethnicity. Learning experiences in Computing will be available to every child, regardless of race, gender, class or ability. Pupils will be encouraged to value social and cultural diversity through language experiences. They will listen to, and participate in, a variety of experiences in a positive and constructive role.

Every unit have reflection and assessment points, this ensures that all children can process and articulate the concepts within the lesson before moving to the next activity, with no pupil left behind.

INCLUSION

Inclusion is about every child having educational needs, that every child is special and the School is meeting these diverse needs in order to ensure the active participation and progress of all children in their learning.

Inclusive practice in Computing should enable all children to achieve their best possible standard; whatever their ability, and irrespective of gender, ethnic, social or cultural background, home language or any other aspect that could affect their participation in, or progress in their learning.

We recognise that in all classes, children have a wide range of ability, and so we seek to provide suitable learning opportunities for all children by matching the challenge of the task to the ability of the child. We achieve this in a variety of ways:

• setting tasks which are open-ended and can have a variety of responses;
• setting tasks of increasing difficulty;
• grouping children by ability and setting different tasks for each group;
• grouping children in mixed ability groups;
• providing resources of different complexity, depending on the ability of the child;
• using classroom assistants to support the work of individuals or groups of children.