COMPUTING

INTENT

At Queensway Primary School, we aim to:

• Provide an engaging, thought-provoking, and pertinent range of lessons that are adapted for accessibility by all pupils.
• Develop pupils’ computational thinking and transferrable computing skills to enable our children to adapt to new technologies as they emerge. This ensures pupils know how to use technology and how to be creators of new technology.
• Provide pupils with the tech literacy skills they need to succeed in the digitally driven world of today.
• Enhance learning across the curriculum.

Pupils’ excellent understanding of digital literacy skills is essential to ensure they are competent and confident users of technology and, importantly, know how to use such technology in a safe and responsible manner.

IMPLEMENTATION

The Computing curriculum consists of three broad strands: computer science, information technology, and digital literacy. Queensway Primary School uses the National Centre for Computing Education’s (NCCE) taxonomy to ensure comprehensive coverage of the Computing curriculum. As the basis for our planning, we use the NCCE’s Teach Computing scheme of learning. This has been developed through a thorough review of the Computing programme of study.

All learning outcomes can be described through a high-level taxonomy of five strands:

• Computer networks – understand how networks can be used to retrieve and share information, and how they come with associated risks
• Computer systems – understand what a computer is, and how its constituent parts function together as a whole
• Creating media – select and create a range of media including text, images, sounds, and video
• Data and information – understand how data is stored, organised, and used to represent real-world artefacts and scenarios
• Programming – create software to allow computers to solve problems

The curriculum has been written to support all pupils. Each lesson is sequenced so that it builds on the learning from the previous lesson, and where appropriate, activities are scaffolded so that all pupils can succeed and thrive. Exploratory tasks foster a deeper understanding of a concept, encouraging pupils to apply their learning in different contexts and make connections with other learning experiences. The units for key stages 1 and 2 are based on a spiral curriculum. This means that each of the themes is 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 style of curriculum design reduces the amount of knowledge lost through forgetting, as topics are revisited yearly.

IMPACT

The impact of our Computing curriculum is that pupils develop their curiosity, enjoyment, and confidence necessary to succeed in the digitally driven world of today. We measure the impact of our curriculum through monitoring and assessment. All Computing lessons incorporate opportunity for formative assessment - ranging from teacher observation and questioning to marked activities - to ensure that misconceptions are addressed. Pedagogically, when we assess, we ensure that we are assessing a pupil's understanding of Computing concept and skills, rather than their reading and writing skills. Therefore, we encourage observational assessment and believe it is the most reliable method of capturing an accurate measure of learning. Monitoring of Computing may take the form of informal discussions with staff and pupils, observation of lessons, monitoring children’s work, and analysis of assessment data.

ONLINE SAFETY

Queensway Primary School prides itself on ensuring every child is safe, happy and inspired, include online. Online safety education is of paramount importance to the safeguarding of children. The statutory Keeping Children Safe in Education 2022 guidance states:

“An effective whole school and college approach to e-safety empowers a school or college to protect and educate pupils, students, and staff in their use of technology and establishes mechanisms to identify, intervene in, and escalate any concerns where appropriate.” (p.35).

Likewise, the UK Council for Internet Safety note how it is essential to teach children and young people about staying safe online, both in and outside school.

Through our Computing curriculum, children are taught to:

• use technology safely, respectfully, and responsibly, keeping personal information private;
• identify where to go for help and support when they have concerns about content or contact on the internet or other online technologies;
• recognise acceptable and unacceptable behaviour;
• identify a range of ways to report concerns about content and contact.

In addition to being taught throughout the curriculum, online safety is also taught through our MindMate/Common Sense mornings, held on the first day of each half term. Lessons use the Common Sense Education curriculum and children are encouraged to develop digital citizenship skills for making smart choices online. The Common Sense Education curriculum covers a multitude of different aspects to keeping safe online, including:

• Media Balance and Wellbeing
• Privacy and Security
• Digital Footprint and Identity
• Relationships and Communication
• Cyberbullying, Digital Drama and Hate Speech
• News and Media Literacy

Online safety is also addressed through whole class discussions, where deemed appropriate by the class teacher, as part of our safeguarding procedures.