Intent
At St. Joseph’s we aim to teach a high quality computing curriculum, which equips pupils to use computational thinking and creativity to prepare them for the future work place in an ever changing world.
Computing at St. Joseph’s ensures that pupils are able to participate safely as citizens in a digital world, where they are encouraged to become computer literate, making informed decisions, expressing themselves and developing ideas through information, communication and technology.
Our approach is to use technology to promote initiative and independent learning across the curriculum and in focussed coding lessons for programming.
Implementation
Our Computing curriculum is embedded in our Learning Challenge curriculum and mapped out to ensure coverage of the National Curriculum objectives. Online safety is a core focus and revisited every half term across all Key stages using a developmental approach based on the Education for a Connected World framework developed by the UK council for Internet Safety.
EYFS: Computing is taught within the Knowledge and Understanding of the World aspect of the Foundation Stage Curriculum. Pupils have opportunities to use technology, including programmable toys and apps on ipads.
KS1 & KS2: We use the Teach Computing Curriculum, which is structured into half termly blocks across all year groups and delivered in weekly lessons. It is built around an innovative progression framework developed by the National Centre for Computing Education, where computing content has been organised into interconnected networks, created by subject experts, using the latest pedagogical research and teacher feedback.
The scheme of work is aligned with the National Curriculum requirements for computing and ensures progressive, comprehensive curriculum coverage across all year groups.
Within the Teach Computing Curriculum, every year group learns through units within the same four themes of computing systems and networks, programming, data and information and creating media. This ensures that skills and concepts progress from one year group to the next. Pupils have access to a range of digital devices, which include, laptops, tablet computers, programmable devices and dataloggers.
We also regularly arrange technology workshops with specialist teachers or equipment from the City Learning Centre, i.e during STEM week to motivate independent computational thinking and to equip our pupils for the next stage in their education.
Impact
At St. Joseph’s, pupils develop their computing skills, and gain a good understanding of online safety issues and how to keep themselves safe online.
Through pupil voice, discussion and feedback, children talk enthusiastically about their computing lessons and speak about how they love learning on the computer.
Teachers plan a range of opportunities for pupils to use digital literacy and information technology, inside and outside school and equip pupils with the skills needed to use technology independently, for example accessing age-appropriate software and games in EYFS and using a range of computer software independently in KS1 and KS2.
Curriculum Overviews