Computing

Intent

At Radcliffe Primary School, we believe that a high-quality computing education will equip children to use computational and creative thinking to understand and change the world. The aim is to raise the profile of computing across school and explore being digitally literate across the curriculum to make learning creative and accessible which will allow pupils to share their learning in creative ways. We want our children to be fluent with a range of tools and to understand the importance of this to become active participants in a digital world and to understand this will play a pivotal role in their lives.

We intend for the children to be respectful and safe online and to be articulate in explaining how to do so.

Implementation

We have an organised curriculum to cover the main objectives for each key stage and clear progression is made from EYFS to Year 6 in terms of depth of understanding and reasoning. Children can transfer reasoning skills from maths to be able to give a detailed response to explain how some algorithms work and to detect and correct errors through the process of de-bugging. Their skillset enhances through key stages as they learn to create and debug simple programs to being able to create more advanced programs.

Children have a clear understanding how to be respectful and safe with technology recognising acceptable and unacceptable use and behaviour. This is articulated and applied to show they are successful at being safe. Children know what to do to report concerns about content and contact. This work is delivered through regular E-safety lessons which are documented in class floor books. These lessons will carefully be adapted to be age appropriate and meets the needs of all year groups from EYFS to Y6.

Children can select and use a range of digital devices and use this in order to carry out cross-curricular activities. They are aware that using a variety of technology is still using their computational and creative thinking, for example:

I can use search technologies effectively.
I can explain how search engines work and how results are selected and ranked.
I can demonstrate the strategies I would apply to be discerning in evaluating digital content.
I can describe how some online information can be opinion and can offer examples.

Children will be aware when algorithms are used in other lessons such as instruction writing in English and are using this vocabulary across the curriculum. This is how we want computing to look across the curriculum, evidenced in other subjects embedded into the curriculum.

Impact

We encourage learners to be reflective and appreciate the impact computing has on their learning, development and well-being and to understand the impact computing will have on their future life.

The class teacher will continually carry out formative assessment in Computing lessons. This will be done through questioning, observations, discussions and evidence in children’s online folders, as well as class floor books Teacher’s will then track their children once a term and assess whether they are WT, WTP, WA, AG or GD. The Reflective Curriculum Team is responsible for keeping an overview of the standard of children’s work and for the quality of teaching. The work of the curriculum team also involves supporting colleagues, being informed about current developments and providing a strategic lead and direction for the subject in the school.

Computing Overview