Computing

Intent

At Gorseland Primary School, we aim to instil a sense of enjoyment around using technology and to develop pupils’ appreciation of its capabilities, knowing the opportunities technology offers to, create, manage, organise, and collaborate. We want to develop pupils’ confidence when encountering new technology, which is a vital skill in the ever evolving and changing landscape of technology. Additionally, we want to equip children for life in the digital world, including their understanding of appropriate online behaviour and ensure each child has a healthy use of technology. 

It is fundamental that children should know, understand and use key vocabulary, as outlined in our curriculum, and have a secure understanding of the three strands of computing: computer science, information technology and digital literacy.

Implementation

At Gorseland, our computing curriculum ensures full National Curriculum coverage. our curriculum provides engaging lessons which cover the following strands of computing:

Computer Science

Information Technology

Digital Literacy

Our Computing scheme of work has been designed as a spiral curriculum, which is cyclical, in that pupils revisit the five key areas throughout KS1 and KS2. There is increasing depth within the curriculum, whereby each time one of the five key areas (outlined below) is revisited, it is covered with greater complexity. The curriculum is also designed so that upon returning to each key area, prior knowledge is utilised so pupils can build on previous foundations, rather than starting again. The curriculum is designed so children build computing knowledge in the following 5 areas:

Lessons incorporate a range of teaching strategies from independent tasks, paired and group work as well as unplugged and digital activities. This variety means that lessons are engaging and appeal to those with a variety of learning styles. 

Impact

The intended impact of our Computing curriculum is that children will:

Teachers make a judgement on the extent to which children have displayed competent skills and met the intended learning outcome each lesson and record this on assessment grids for each module. This feeds into an end of term teacher assessment for each child. Where learning is recorded in books, this is marked regularly by teachers and feedback is given to highlight learning and next steps. 

Subject leaders monitor teaching and learning in their subject through observing teaching and learning in lessons, analysing the work produced by children, talking to samples of children in different year groups about what they know and remember from their learning and termly data analysis to track the progress of learning in their subject across the school. 

Long Term Plan

Reception

Autumn

Computing Continuous Provision

Using a computer

Online Safety

Spring

All about instructions

Exploring Hardware

Online Safety

Summer

Programming Bee-Bots

Introduction to data

Online Safety

Year 1

Autumn

Improving mouse skills

Algorithms unplugged

Online Safety

Spring

Rocket to the Moon

Programming Bee-Bots

Online Safety

Summer

Digital Imagery Google

Introduction to data

Online Safety

Year 2

Autumn

What is a computer

Algorithms and debugging

Online Safety

Spring

Word Processing - Google

Programming Scratch Jnr

Online Safety

Summer

Stop motion

International Space Station

Online Safety

Year 3

Autumn

Networks and the Internet

Programming Scratch

Online Safety

Spring

Emailing

Journey inside a computer

Online Safety

Summer

Video trailers

Comparison Cards database

Online Safety

Year 4

Autumn

Collaborative Learning

Further coding with Scratch

Online Safety

Spring

Website Design

HTML

Online Safety

Summer

Computational thinking

Investigating Weather

Online Safety

Year 5

Autumn

Search Engines

Programming Music

Online Safety

Spring

Mars Rover 1

Micro:bit

Online Safety

Summer

Stop motion animation

Mars Rover 2

Online Safety

Year 6

Autumn

Bletchley Park 1

Intro to Python

Online Safety

Spring

Big data 1

History of Computers

Online Safety

Summer

Big Data 2

Inventing a product

Online Safety