Technology is a quintessential ingredient of modern-day life, developing and transforming the future of the world. Through our computing curriculum, 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 children to become independent and resilient users of technology, having the confidence and critical problem-solving skills required to create content, write programmes and build systems rather than just being passive users.
This starts in our foundation stage where computing permeates several aspects of teaching and learning.
Through play and exploration, children have the opportunity to tinker and play with a range of age appropriate input devices, developing their physical and fine motor skills. In their growing understanding of the world, they make, check and fix things, exploring how things work. As their confidence with I.T develops, they begin to use IT to express themselves creatively. They start to learn that there are rules to follow and they talk about sensible screen time.
Throughout EYFS, children learn the building blocks for computational thinking. They learn to anticipate, explain and look for similarities and differences. They begin to break problems down into steps and learn to persevere working out what is important and ignoring what is not. Through communication and language acquisition, they recognise the importance of using the correct vocabulary, along with speaking clearly and precisely, giving instructions, remembering and determining rules. This prepares them for the next stage of their learning.
Throughout KS1 and KS2, we aim to deliver the national curriculum for computing in a balanced, stimulating and creative way, which best supports our pupils to gain an understanding of the foundations, application and implications of computing. We teach our children online safety and digital citizenship as outlined in the Education for a Connected World Framework.
Computing is taught discretely through a curriculum with sequences of lessons, which lead with key concepts, terms and vocabulary in order for pupils to retain knowledge, make connections and build up a consistent understanding. Teacher modelling is an important feature in lessons as it provides a scaffold to novices, which can gradually be taken away. Scaffolded activities and extra resources, such as visual prompts, allow SEN pupils to reach the same learning goals as the rest of the class.
Our curriculum includes hands on physical computing, offering a tactile and sensory experience to engage children. When meeting more complex concepts, the semantic waves approach (unplug, unpack, repack) is used to bring problems to life within real world contextual examples in order to help the children gain a better understanding.
When teaching programming, teachers focus first on code ‘reading’ activities before code writing and there is a clear progression of skills between year groups.
Our curriculum is designed to allow our children to understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms and data representation. It provides children with opportunities to analyse problems in computational terms, and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems.
Children learn to evaluate and apply information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems.
Children are taught to be responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology.
Our Computing Curriculum Overview and policy can be downloaded below.
Computing Overview
Computing Policy
Online Safety
Childnet is a great website that helps to make the internet a great and safe place for children. Advice, tips and resources for parents, teachers and children can be found here.
Below are some useful engines which your child could use to help keep them safe whilst online:
- KidRex – searches emphasize kid-related webpages from across the entire web and are powered by Google Custom Search and use Google SafeSearch technology.
- KidzSearch – based on Google, but results are further filtered and don’t depend on computer or browser settings
- KidsClick – a web search site designed for kids by librarians
- Mymunka – designed just for kids and is Fun and safe for everyone. Browse and Share Thousands of Digital Flashcards and Learning Aids.