Computing

Intent

At St. Clare’s we aim to provide our children with an exciting, challenging computing education that equips them with the skills and knowledge they will need in the 21^st century.  We want our children to develop creativity, resilience and problem-solving skills by learning how to be computational thinkers. 

 We aim to provide a broad and balanced curriculum incorporating computer science, information technology (media and data handling) and digital literacy.  We aim to make our children safe, responsible, digital citizens ready for the challenges of the ever-changing online world. 

Implementation

What do we teach? What does this look like?

In our school we use resources from the NCCE, Barefoot Computing and Project Evolve.  We have split computing into the following strands:

• Computer Science: Using Computational Thinking to explore, modify, create and debug algorithms and programs.

• Media: Make digital creations including text-based documents, presentations, 2D and 3D plans and models, films, animations, music and spoken word recordings.

• Data Handling: Collect analyse and process data.

• Project Evolve – Digital Literacy – Self-image and identity, online relationships, online reputation, online bullying, managing online information, health, wellbeing and lifestyle, privacy and security, copyright and ownership.

From Years 1-6 we allocate 1 hour a week to teach computing.  Computing is delivered by class teachers and HLTAs.  The table below illustrates when we teach each strand during the year.

The first lesson of each half term is allocated to digital literacy activities that are identified through the use of knowledge maps in Project Evolve: How Knowledge Maps Work | ProjectEVOLVE

Early Years integrate computational thinking activities throughout their curriculum which are based on resources from Barefoot Computing.  They use programable toys and other electronic devices to explore, record, programme and tinker.  Teachers use Project Evolve to deliver digital literacy activities.

Impact

To measure the impact of our Computing Curriculum the Computing leader examines work completed by pupils.  Computing is a complex subject when it comes to saving work as it can take the following forms:

• Unplugged activities.
• Pen and paper-based activities.
• Work on iPads that can only be saved in the app.
• Work saved as digital files on a network such as work created in Google Workspace.
• Work saved in Purple Mash.
• Work completed using online services such as Scratch and Tinkercad.
• Work saved online to a specific platform such as Google Docs, Scratch online, or paid platforms such as Purple Mash or J2E.

School uses Floorbooks as a method to capture both digital and unplugged work.  

As well as these methods teachers also capture evidence of pupil work on their teacher ipads and tag in pupils and allocate work to a computing folder.

All teachers populate a spreadsheet as a way to assess pupils’ progress. The computing leader also gathers information to make judgements about pupil understanding by using electronic and face-to-face pupil voice.