Computing

Linthwaite Clough school understands that ICT and computing are an integral part of the National Curriculum and Early Years Framework and that ICT skills are important beyond the classroom.

Our intent is to provide children with the essential computing skills to aid them in today’s modern lifestyle. Technology is everywhere and plays a pivotal part in children’s lives. Within school, computers are a valuable resource, benefiting the way pupils learn and helping teachers maximise their role as educators. Therefore, we want to educate pupils and model how to use technology positively, responsibly and safely. Our curriculum is led by concepts, terms and vocabulary providing opportunities to build shared and consistent understanding.

Guided by the National Curriculum and Early Years Framework and with the use of the National Centre for Computing Education’s Teach Computing scheme of work, the computing curriculum at Linthwaite Clough School provides children with the opportunity to: develop their experience and understanding of technology; work collaboratively; build resilience; and learn how to be safe users of computing resources.

Our teaching using the Teach Computing scheme of work is underpinned by the 12 principles of computing pedagogy:

• Lead with concepts – support pupils in the acquisition of knowledge, through the use of key concepts, terms, and vocabulary, providing opportunities to build a shared and consistent understanding.

• Work together – encourage collaboration to stimulate classroom dialogue, articulation of concepts, and development of shared understanding.

• Get hands-on – use physical computing and making activities that offer a tactile and sensory experience to enhance learning.

• Unplug, unpack, repack – teach new concepts by first unpacking complex terms and ideas, exploring these ideas in unplugged and familiar contexts, then repacking this new understanding into the original concept (the approach known as semantic waves).

• Model everything – processes or practices are modelled which is particularly beneficial to novices and provide scaffolding that can be gradually taken away.

• Foster program comprehension – use a variety of activities to consolidate knowledge and understanding of the function and structure of programs.

• Create projects – use project-based learning activities to provide pupils with the opportunity to apply and consolidate their knowledge and understanding.

• Add variety – provide activities with different levels of direction, scaffolding, and support that promote learning, ranging from highly structured to more exploratory tasks.

• Challenge misconceptions – use formative questioning to uncover misconceptions and adapt teaching to address them as they occur.

• Make concrete – bring abstract concepts to life with real-world, contextual examples and a focus on interdependencies with other curriculum subjects.

• Structured lessons – supportive frameworks have been used in teach computing planning such as PRIMM (Predict, Run, Investigate, Modify, make).

• Read and explore code first – when teaching programming the focus is first on code ‘reading’ activities, before code writing because research has shown that being able to read, trace, and explain code augments pupils’ ability to write code.

We build upon children’s prior knowledge to develop the understanding of the following key concepts:

• computing systems and networks.

• programming.

• data and information.

• creating media.

• online safety.

The key concepts progress through the years and are contained within units; only the programming units need to be taught in order. This lends itself well to adaption for mixed aged classes in a two-year cycle. The total of four programming units can be taught one after the other over a two-year cycle containing these four units and a further eight units that can be taught individually.

In EYFS children begin to use digital equipment safely such as iPads and Bee-Bots. Computing at Linthwaite Clough School helps children become more digitally literate, preparing them for the digital world we now live in.

Children from year one upwards have a weekly slot dedicated to computing using a wide variety of technology from software such as Scratch to laptops and Crumble Controllers.

Opportunities are taken to make meaningful cross curricular links, for example in Year 2 using pictograms to draw conclusions linked to the maths curriculum and in Year 5 linking to English (drafting and writing narratives) when creating a stop frame animation.

In the units individual lessons build on learning from previous lessons and can refer back to them. Each lesson has a reminder slide to cover what was done in the lesson and what will happen in the next lesson.

Teachers carry out formative assessment and provide verbal feedback within lessons. Summative assessment of digital and hardcopy learning is also carried out after teaching.

By the time children leave Linthwaite Clough School, they will be responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology and will recognise the importance of e-safety not only at school but at home to. They will be aware of online safety issues and understand how to keep themselves safe off and online. Children will have skills that they can utilise and apply in all areas of the curriculum and will continue to build on the skills to help them thrive in the modern changing world.

By the end of year 6 pupils will:

• have progressed from developing an understanding of technology and how it can help them to exploring how data is transferred over the Internet

• have progressed from exploring digital art to having been introduced to the creation of websites for a chosen purpose

• have progressed from using early programming concepts that move a robot to exploring the concept of variables in programming through games

• have progressed from grouping data to being introduced to spreadsheets

• have progressed from using a computer to create and change text to creating a computer 3-D model

• have progressed from being introduced to on-screen programming to bringing together the four programming constructs of sequence, repetition, selection and variables by utilising the micro:bit physical device