Button Lane Primary School

Computing

Computing Leads - Mr Pyne & Mr Fitton

Computing Curriculum Intent

The intent of our Computing curriculum in school is to equip our children with thinking skills, digital literacy knowledge and creativity to understand and change the world. Computing allows our children to develop skills in finding, exploring, safely sharing and presenting information. These skills support our children to problem-solve, investigate and express themselves in a variety of ways, using a variety of forms. We promote the safe use of the internet at the core of our Computing curriculum coverage. Our whole school approach to e-safety ensures that we are able to teach children about staying safe and behaving responsibly when using internet technologies.

Through the teaching of Computing, we prepare children at Button Lane for participation in a rapidly changing world where work and leisure activities are increasingly transformed by technology. This is further enhanced by the range of equipment that is used. We understand that what we are teaching in computing and the tools we use to deliver this at the start of their school career are not likely to be the same as those used when they leave Y6.

Whilst taught as a stand-alone subject, Computing is also valued as a teaching and learning tool across the curriculum. It significantly enhances teaching and learning in all subjects by enabling rapid access to knowledge, information and experiences from a wide range of sources. We endeavour to teach pupils to be selective in their choice of information sources and to understand that not everything on the internet is valid. We are committed to keeping children safe online and in supporting parents/carers to understand their responsibilities in this area through sharing information eg. leaflets and through presentations. The curriculum has been designed to be progressive and engaging for all year groups.

Implementation 

Our Computing Curriculum has been carefully built around the aims of the National Curriculum. The learning opportunities and assessment points for each year group have been designed to ensure progression and repetition in order to embed key learning, knowledge and skills. Within our computing curriculum, we focus on the five main themes of computing: 

• Digital Literacy,
• Online Safety,
• Computational Thinking,
• Computers and Hardware.

These are revisited year on year where children progressively build their skills and knowledge. We frequently revisit online safety through themed days and celebrations such as ‘Safer Internet Day’ and throughout our PSHE curriculum. 

We use ‘Kapow Computing Curriculum’ to form the basis of our Computing curriculum, to ensure a clear, consistent approach that supports teaching and learning. This ensures full  content coverage of the National Curriculum and has been organised into 3 areas – Computer Science, Information Technology and Digital Literacy. In each lesson children may be looking at hardware, studying networks and data representation, learning about computational thinking, programming or using software, the internet or email and ensures that our children can revisit, apply and build on their computational skills as they move through the school, as highlighted on our whole school progression map.  Computing is taught discreetly but where appropriate we make meaningful links across subjects. 

Our curriculum is crafted this way to support our children to retain what they have been taught, to alter their long-term memory and improve the rates of progress they make.

Impact

Assessment is used as a tool to inform our teaching and learning and to measure the impact of the curriculum we have created. We vary our approach to assessment to ensure it is tailored towards each subject. It takes place purposefully and meaningfully at key points across the year.

We assess each Computing unit in the following ways:

• Through formative and summative assessment in every lesson
• Assessment grids to systematically assess what the children know as the unit progresses and to inform future planning and future summative assessment
• A knowledge catcher at the beginning of each unit to assess prior knowledge and at the end of the project to review progress 
• Weekly reviews to assess prior knowledge and starting points at the beginning of each lesson 
• Low stakes end of unit quiz to assess the key knowledge and end points 
• Moderation within school using the children's books/ work, observations and end of unit projects/outcomes using clear descriptors 
• Pupil Voice

A comprehensive monitoring cycle is developed at the beginning of each academic year. Looking at children's work, learning walks, pupil voice and conversations between subject leaders and class teachers take place to ensure that standards across the curriculum are monitored and reported annually to staff,  parent’s and  governors. All of the information is gathered and reviewed and is used to inform further curriculum developments and provision is adapted accordingly.

Computing Curriculum Documents

Computing Whole School Overview

How the National Curriculum Objectives are Covered 

Vocabulary Progression