What Is Our Vision?
At St Helen's, we aim to provide children with the skills, knowledge, understanding and experience in a wider range of computing skills. It is our intention to enable children to find, explore, analyse and present information using different media. We aim to provide the skills to enable them to embrace and utilise new technology which allows them to be socially responsible and safe.
Internet safety is a vital skill for children to learn and understand in the modern world, where they will so often find themselves exposed to the online world and the huge amount of information that they can access from it. We prepare our children for this and many other situations involving technology. At all times we teach our children to have a mutual respect for one another and this is no different when accessing online activities.
Our aim is to not only give our children the skills they will need to access modern technology confidently and safely but to also teach transferrable skills that they will be able to utilise in the future with new and evolving technologies. Through our computing teaching, we want our children to be ready for the 21st century and the rapidly-changing world. We want our children to be confident, independent users who develop their creativity, problem solving, resilience and critical thinking skills through their computing sessions.
We believe that computing is an essential subject which is taught as both a stand alone subject as well as been woven throughout all the other subjects in the curriculum, becoming an integral part of the learning experience.
Our Approach
Our computing curriculum is delivered through Purplemash and covers all aspects of the National Curriculum. We have adapted the delivery of this programme to match the needs of our school allowing for weekly computing sessions which provide children with a range of skills in three key areas - Computer Science, Information Technology & Digital Literacy.
Our computing curriculum is taught across both KS1 and KS2 and unit builds on the previous learning that has taken place. We have mapped out a clear progression of skills that allows the children to develop their computing ability and challenge themselves in their learning. We also provide opportunities for EYFS children to access a variety of technology to begin building experiences and skills from a very early age.
Across school children have access to a wide variety of technology. We deliver out computing sessions using laptops, Ipads and desktops, these resources are also used across the curriculum to support other areas of learning. Each class has an interactive screen which can be used for supporting teaching and learning. We also have a number of other resources to enhance our computing curriculum such as programmable toys, robots and microchips which the children can programme for a variety of purposes.
Computing skills are taught both discretely and cross curricular, supporting other areas of learning across the school. Online safety is taught throughout the year and is an important part of every computing topic throughout the school.
Curriculum Impact
The impact of this curriculum ensures that when children leave St Helen's, they will be digitally literate and have the skills to join the rest of the world in its online environment. They will be seen as competent and safe users of ICT and have an understanding of how the technology they use works.
Children in our school will have developed the skills they need to express themselves using digital media and be able to utilise these skills to support and present their learning. As they progress through the Computing curriculum children will become more confident in applying their skills independently in a range of different ways.
We will measure the impact of the computing through:
- Pupil achievement data
- Pupil voice
- Lesson observations
- Learning walks
- Work scrutiny
In our computing lessons some of the things you will see are:
- Proficient users of technology who are able to work both independently and collaboratively.
- Computing hardware and software being utilised to enhance the learning outcomes of our children, across the curriculum.
- Clear progression in technical skills and vocabulary.
- A learning buzz as children engage in programming, instruct floor robots, prepare online safety presentations and design body confidence video campaigns.
- Collaboration and support between children, teachers and groups of learners.