Computing
At The Shade Primary School, we believe that a stimulating, progressive and creative Computing curriculum will give our children the best opportunity to become skillful, resourceful and innovative citizens preparing children for the ever-changing digital age.
Our Computing curriculum has been written in line with our vision to support all pupils. Weekly lessons are sequenced so that they build on learning from the previous lesson, and where appropriate, activities are scaffolded so that all pupils can succeed and thrive. scaffolded activities provide our pupils with extra resources, such as visual prompts, to enable all to reach the same learning goals. Exploratory tasks foster a deeper understanding of a concept through encouraging pupils to apply their learning in different contexts and make connections with other learning experiences .
Our computing curriculum is delivered through the Primary Teach Computing curriculum. It is developed by the National Centre for Computing Education (NCCE) matching our school vision with their vision for every child in every school in England receiving a world-leading computing education. Computing themes are revisited regularly (at least once in each year group), and pupils revisit each theme through a new unit that consolidates and builds on prior learning within that theme. This approach ensures that connections are made even if different teachers are teaching the units within a theme in consecutive years.
We cover computer systems and networks, creating media, programming, handling data and information and online safety (in part through our PSHE curriculum).
Through our partnership with the Pye Foundation, we have invested in STEM resources, including those for computing. These are aimed at developing children’s knowledge of, and skills in, physical computing. Our computing curriculum integrates the use of microbits, data loggers and Beebots in order to offer a greater range of applications for fully engaging all pupils in every element of computing across the school.
The National Curriculum for computing aims to ensure that all pupils:
- can understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms and data representation
- can analyse problems in computational terms, and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems
- can evaluate and apply information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems
- are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology.