Computing   

Intent, Implementation and Impact

Computing is such an important life skill. Technology is part of everyday life and for most of us, is essential to our lives at home and at work.  At Alwoodley Primary, we believe children need to know how to become computer scientist so that they can navigate through the ever-changing technology world we live in. We also believe children have the right to enjoy childhood online, to access safe online spaces and to benefit from all the opportunities that a connected world can bring to them.

Intent 

At Alwoodley Primary School, we have chosen the Teach Computing Scheme of work where there is a strong emphasis on allowing pupils to combine their knowledge and skills of computing and apply it to everyday situations. The Teach Computing Scheme builds the knowledge and skills year on year to help deepen and challenge our children at Alwoodley. Children have access to a range of hardware and software that they need to develop the knowledge, skills and their application. As well as using the Teach Computing Scheme, we will enhance the curriculum with National Online Safety lessons making sure we cover the Education for a Connected World framework. We aim to make children’s learning in Computing relevant, practical, creative and engaging whilst carefully weaving our Alwoodley Golden Threads through the curriculum.

Golden Thread 1 – Cognitive education - will be promoted so that children can enquire, analyse and problem solve, creating links with their prior knowledge.

Golden Thread 2 – a love of reading – will be developed through the explicit teaching of vocabulary, introducing new terms and using a variety of texts during our fluency of reading.

Golden Thread 3 – personal development – will be developed through the use of explicit online safety lessons making sure children know how technology can influence behaviour, how to get support, and what skills they need to be able to navigate it safely.

Implementation

We have chosen to implement computing through the ‘Teach Computing’ scheme and National Online Safety scheme.

Our Teach Computing scheme guides teachers to implement the computing curriculum using a spiral curriculum. Pupils revisit each theme through a new unit that consolidates and builds on prior learning within that theme. The Teach Computing Curriculum has been written to support all pupils. Each lesson is sequenced so that it builds on the learning from the previous lesson, and where appropriate, activities are scaffolded so that all pupils can succeed and thrive. Scaffolded activities provide pupils with extra resources, such as visual prompts, to reach the same learning goals as the rest of the class. Exploratory tasks foster a deeper understanding of a concept, encouraging pupils to apply their learning in different contexts and make connections with other learning experiences. As well as scaffolded activities, embedded within the lessons are a range of pedagogical strategies which support making computing topics more accessible. The scheme is built around an innovative progression framework where computing content has been organised into interconnected topics. Our National Online Safety Lessons provide a curriculum with everything children need to be engaged and to be inspired to learn about online safety. Formed directly in line with the learning objectives from the UKCIS Education for a Connected World Framework, these lessons are designed to support statutory curriculum requirements and recommended best practice.

Impact

We use a range of strategies to assess what skills and knowledge the children have attained each term including the following:

• Monitoring of work on the school systems.
• Use of super six 
• Pupil Voice 
• Regular feedback each lesson

Implementation

If you have any questions regarding the curriculum we teach please contact the school directly.

If you are being bullied online, or if you have any concerns about things on the internet, speak to a trusted adult, call the police or use this link:

https://www.ceop.police.uk/CEOP-Reporting