Intent

Our aim for Computing at Petham Primary School is to equip children to participate in a rapidly changing world where work and leisure activities are increasingly transformed by technology. We believe that computing holds an important role in our children’s education in order to prepare them for life in an ever-changing technological society. We ensure that we deliver an age-appropriate e-safety curriculum that teaches our pupils how to stay safe, protect themselves and take responsibility for their own and other’s safety. We deliver a program that develops a wide range of fundamental skills, knowledge and understanding encompassing computer science, information technology and digital literacy.

In line with our whole-school Curriculum Intent, our teachers are passionate and help to foster a love of learning, inquiry and resilience through their teaching. We use a range of hardware, software and physical computing to allow our pupils to be fully engaged, and motivated towards, their own learning.

Our school core values are interwoven throughout our Computing curriculum. Our pupils are encouraged to take leadership over their learning and the hardware and software they use including how to log on, ensure they are keeping themselves and other’s safe and looking after the hardware itself. The children are taught to develop their own organisation skills, including saving their work correctly, retrieving it again later and storing their hardware securely, to increase their independence and readiness for their life in our increasingly technology-based world. Our pupils will need to demonstrate resilience when tackling new concepts and debugging when programming. Throughout our curriculum the children have many opportunities to be independent and use their own initiative as they build upon the key skills and knowledge they are taught. Communication plays and important role in computing as the children often work collaboratively to build their ideas, follow instructions and also use different software to demonstrate how we can use technology to communicate with others and share information.

Implementation

Our computing curriculum has been designed to meet all of the skills, knowledge and understanding set out in the National Curriculum. The National Curriculum states that “Computing also ensures that pupils become digitally literate – able to use, and express themselves and develop their ideas through, information and communication technology – at a level suitable for the future workplace and as active participants in a digital world”.

To ensure that our pupils have a secure knowledge, our curriculum is progressive and our children have the opportunity to revisit skills and software throughout their time at Petham to give them the opportunity to revisit, and build upon, prior knowledge.

To support our understanding and delivery of computing we follow the Kapow scheme of learning which breaks the curriculum into age appropriate units which cover computer science, information technology and digital literacy. The content of each of these strands is carefully organised across the school and monitored by the subject leader to ensure our curriculum is progressive and meets the needs of our children.

Learning is reviewed at the end of each unit and displayed in our whole-school floor book at the end of each term to demonstrate their learning and understanding. Our teachers regularly use questioning and retrieval techniques to ensure the children’s knowledge has been retained. Assessment in computing is ongoing throughout all of our lessons and teachers use their own observations, alongside the pupil’s work, to inform future planning, activities and differentiation. Teachers also carry out end of term quizzes to assess the children's knowledge of what has been taught each half term. 

Impact

At Petham Primary School, our computing lessons are progressively planned and implemented by enthusiastic teachers to ensure our children develop a range of knowledge, skills and understanding in order to achieve their age-related expectations. Our children have opportunities to access prior learning to support their progression in the subject and to ensure we, as educators, deliver a consistent and systematic curriculum. At the end of each unit the children’s learning is displayed in our whole school floor book to showcase their learning and to give the children an opportunity to celebrate and share their achievements.

To learn how we keep your children safe please refer to our Online Safety page