Computing

At Rushton Primary School, we realise that pupils are becoming more and more aware of technology at a young age. Therefore, it’s our intent to not only educate pupils how to use technology in an academic way, but also to prepare them for using it outside of school. At Rushton, our computing curriculum is delivered by Junior Jam, who offer professional and skilled individuals to teach the computing units.

Our teaching and learning is designed to teach the whole computing curriculum from Reception to Year 6. We do this by combining the computing curriculum with a wide range of media subjects to inspire pupils in a topic they may not have done before. It is our hope that educating pupils in topics such as music production or stop motion animation will develop new interests for them and inspire our pupils to use this in their future careers.

We want to ensure that pupils cover all the national curriculum points and achieve progress using different aspects of technology and computing safely and with a deep understanding. To be able to do this, we have set out a curriculum for computing spanning the school career of a child. This can be evidenced in our progression maps.

To ensure that the curriculum is progressive and differentiated from year group to year group, our curriculum is designed so that each year is placed on a specific level. We have written the lesson plans with this intent in mind and targeted the learning at that specific year group.

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At the end of EYFS

Pupils in Reception will develop knowledge and understanding of the Early Learning Goals through the computing curriculum. Pupils will explore different types of digital media, linking to ‘expressive arts and design’. Pupils will recognise and use technology around the school and their homes, linking to ‘Understanding the World’. By the end of the year, pupils will know about 2D and 3D animations, know how to use a camera and where they started and have an understanding of basic film plotting.

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At the end of Key Stage 1

Pupils will know basic song writing skills, using GarageBand. They will have started to explore coding, and begin to problem solve with coding. Pupils will have learnt how to use ‘Stop Motion’ animation, will create a plot and will have overcome challenges.

Pupils will have participated in digital photography, and will have learnt to edit photos taken in their school environment.

By the end of KS1, pupils will have a good understanding of internet and digital safety and will have developed some strategies to keep themselves and others safe while using technology.

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At the end of Key Stage 2

By the end of primary school, our pupils will have a deeper understanding of computing by the way the curriculum is implemented. They will understand how to use technology and how it can benefit them, both in school and within their daily lives. It will have instilled in them a sense of balance between how much time should be spent on digital devices.  Pupils will know how to sample and audio edit. They will develop their coding skills further and will have learnt how to repair the mistakes made to a program.  Pupils will know how to use excel and will use this to create spreadsheets.

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Pedagogy: How the Curriculum is Taught

Our Computing curriculum provides content including concepts, knowledge, skills, keywords and objectives, and is taught using the following key components:
Computer Science – the understanding of coding and programming across a range of physical devices and digital resources.
Information Technology – the range of skills required to operate and manipulate specific programmes, systems and content.
Digital Literacy – the knowledge required to use technology safely and to evaluate and react to any potential risks of the online/digital world.

Within our curriculum we bring aspects of computational thinking to all of the activities and modules to help your children to gain independence and skills in problem solving;
Decomposition: Solve a problem by breaking it into smaller pieces.
Pattern: Find the order and analyse the data.

Abstraction: Ignore/take away anomalies within the pattern.
Algorithmic Design: Create a solution using a series of ordered steps.

We supplement our curriculum with Apple apps such as Scratch, Hopscotch, Tynker and Lightbot to ensure the greatest development within our pupils’ knowledge. We also enrich our curriculum with extra resources such as headphones, complex programming booklets and animation extras to enhance the learning and give appropriate challenges to our pupils.

To ensure the pupils gain the most from our activities, we also place a high value on internet safety and dedicate a whole half term to this within KS1 and KS2. Not only this, we embed internet safety knowledge at various points throughout the year.

 

Assessment

We use a multi-faceted approach to assessment within Computing;

 

•    Verbal feedback during lessons.
•    Session Forms – These are weekly reports on whether the learning objective for the lesson was achieved.
•    Course Evaluations – These are half-termly reports for each class, measuring how the class performs against a range of statements specific to the course, allowing our teachers to track how the class performs against national expectations.
•    Reporting and Assessing – These are individual grades for each child covering attainment, behaviour and progression within the course.
•    Uploads – Each half term work from each class will be given back to school. This means pupils can share their hard work and new skills with their school, parents and peers.

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Cultural Capital

Enrichment is an essential part of our Computing curriculum which provides pupils with discrete time to deepen their learning.  They provide opportunities for new experiences as well as nurturing and developing a thirst for learning. 

 

We use a multi-faceted approach to enrichment within Computing:

• Creating show and tells using PowerPoint to present to your class

 

Career Professional Development

We develop strong subject knowledge amongst all staff which is achieved through comprehensive middle leadership development, a focus on developing all teachers’ subject knowledge and computing pedagogy. All staff benefit from implementing the high-quality planning resources provided by the Trust which is amended to meet the needs of all pupils.

 

Below is a summary of the CPD activities bespoke to Computing:

• Sharing knowledge from trust-wide meetings

• Bespoke training videos

• 1:1 discussions with staff about lessons