INTENT

At The Holt Primary School, it is our aim that children develop computing knowledge and skills that equip them for the technological world we live in. Our curriculum is intended to develop not only their digital literacy skills to ensure they can communicate effectively, but also their understanding of information technology and its vast and varied uses in today's society. A significant part of this is to develop their understanding of the need to use technology safely and how to do this responsibly. Developing skills in  programming, debugging and logical sequencing complete our teaching and learning with the aim of promoting creativity and allowing our pupils to become computer scientists.

'Everyone should learn how to code, it teaches you how to think.' Steve Jobs

IMPLEMENTATION

Computing has a very important place in our curriculum. It nurtures creative and logical thinking skills through the computer science element as well as ensures pupils learn about the role of technology through digital literacy, equipping them with a progressive set of skills and knowledge to become an effective communicator and safe technology user. Online and digital safety is an important aspect, and this is linked directly to the PSHEE scheme of work and is consistently referred to and acknowledged to support our pupils in the modern world.  Our teaching, using the Purple Mash Curriculum, which provides a framework for the development of computer science, information technology and digital literacy skills that promotes the use of many applications and a variety of software. The overlap between units serve to deepen their understanding of computational concepts and provides opportunities to apply and extend understanding and make links in their knowledge and capabilities.

National curriculum in England: computing programmes of study - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

 In all ICT lessons we will reinforce our school’s characteristics of good learning:

 Respect. Reflective. Responsible. Resourceful. Resilient. Reasoning.

IMPACT

Our Computing Curriculum is high quality, well thought out and is planned to demonstrate progression. By the end of the primary journey, we aim for all our pupils to have developed a wide range of skills and techniques to enable them to be a good digital citizen and computer scientist.  In order to join the technological world, they should be digitally literate, using technology effectively and for their own benefit and above all safely.

If children are keeping up with the curriculum, they are deemed to be making good or better progress. In addition, we measure the impact of our curriculum through the following methods:

• A reflection on standards achieved against the planned outcomes
• A celebration of learning at the end of a unit
• Pupil discussions about their learning

The impact of our computing curriculum will be measured by assessment procedures which allow us to measure outcomes against statements outlines within our progression documents.

Assessment procedures

Teachers will use ongoing assessment for learning techniques to support the development of vocabulary and the acquisition of new knowledge.  A range of information gathering activities such as learning flashbacks and progress pauses will be used to ascertain how well children are learning within this subject and what they need next to support their understanding.