Our Curriculum Intent
At St. Gregory’s Primary School we recognise the importance of Computing in every aspect of daily life. Knowledge and understanding of the Computing Curriculum is of increasing importance in children’s futures. Our Computing curriculum focuses on a progression of skills in digital literacy, computer science, information technology and online safety to ensure that children become competent in safely using, as well as understanding technology.
Through teaching Computing our intent is to equip our children to be active participants in a rapidly changing world where work and leisure activities are increasingly transformed by technology. Computer skills play a vital role in enabling children to be confident, creative and independent learners and it is our intention that children have every opportunity available to allow them to achieve this.
It is our intention that Computing also supports cross-curricular learning through engaging the children and enriching their learning. Not only do we want our children to be digitally literate and competent but through our computing lessons we want them to develop an understanding of themselves as members of a wider global community and as responsible digital citizens.
Our Curriculum Implementation
At St. Gregory’s Primary School, computing is taught in one of two ways. The first is specific computing skills teaching that practises or develops an aspect of the curriculum. The other is as part of another lesson, where computing resources or skills will be used to support other areas of the learning, such as researching a history topic. This ensures children are able to develop depth in their knowledge and skills across all areas of the computing curriculum.
Teachers use ‘Switched-On Computing’ and ‘The NCCE Computing Curriculum’ schemes as a starting point for the planning of their computing lessons.
In computing lessons the children predominantly use iPads, accessing a range of apps, software and websites. The implementation of the curriculum also ensures a balanced coverage of computer science, information technology and digital literacy. The children will have experience of all three strands across the year with the skills taught becoming more specific and increasingly complex, thus ensuring that learning progresses effectively.
Online safety is also taught regularly at an age-appropriate level and forms the basis of all computing learning.
Our Curriculum Impact
Children at St. Gregory’s Primary School will be digitally literate and able to join the rest of the world on its digital platform. They will be equipped, not only with the skills and knowledge to use technology effectively, but more importantly safely.
The biggest impact on our children is that they understand the consequences of using the internet and that they are also aware of how to keep themselves safe online.
The assessment of children’s computing skills is an ongoing process and will involve observations, collecting evidence such as photographs, videos, watching the children work and talking to them about their work.
Teachers record their assessments of children’s learning termly using our whole school tracking system – INSIGHT. Computing is monitored throughout the year using a variety of strategies such as lesson observations, pupil interviews and looking at samples of work.