INTENT
It is our intention to provide a high-quality computing education so that children understand the pivotal role technology plays in their lives and equip them to participate in a rapidly changing digital world. Through our computing curriculum, we aim to give our pupils the life-skills that will enable them to embrace and utilise new technology in a socially responsible and safe way; leading to our pupils being able to operate in the 21st century workplace.
At Burghfield St Mary’s we strive to inspire our learners to become autonomous, independent users of computing technologies, gaining confidence and enjoyment from their activities. We want the use of technology to support learning across the entire curriculum and to ensure that our curriculum is accessible to every child. Not only do we want them to be digitally literate and competent users of technology, but through our computer science lessons, we want them to develop creativity, resilience and problem-solving skills by learning how to be ‘computational thinkers’. The breadth of experience of computing at Burghfield St Mary’s should develop pupils’ understanding of themselves, as individuals within their community, but also as members of a wider global community and as responsible digital citizens.
IMPLEMENTATION
Computing at Burghfield St. Mary’s is taught in line with the National curriculum. At Burghfield St Mary’s we follow a comprehensive and hands on approach to the Computing curriculum based on the Teach Computing scheme of work. The Teach Computing curriculum by the NCCE is underpinned by their 12 principles of Computing Pedagogy: each principle has been shown to contribute to effective teaching and learning in computing. The Teach Computing scheme of work ensures that units build on each other from one key stage to the next; using the spiral curriculum approach to progress skills and concepts from one year group to the next. Online safety is also taught through PSHE (SCARF) units and Computing is also seen in Design Technology and Science learning (STEM subjects) as well as other subjects. This raises the profile of computing within the school and the children’s minds and illustrates how computing is part everyday life and reinforces learning taught in discrete lessons. We have a class set of laptops, chrome books and a half class set of tablets, that all year groups have the opportunity to use across the wider curriculum, as well as in discrete computing lessons.
IMPACT
Our approach to the curriculum results in a fun, engaging, and high-quality computing education for our children. The quality of the children’s learning is evident in lessons, where pupils can share and evaluate their own work, as well as that of their peers. This evidence, of evaluating the knowledge and skills gained by the pupils, is used to feed into teachers’ future planning. This supports varied paces of learning and ensures all pupils make good progress and become fluent, confident users of technology.
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