At St Clement's and St John's Infant School, we want all children to be prepared for their future, recognising how technology is an aid to learning; demonstrate an understanding of how to be safe and confident users of technology; and be creative and innovative learners.
The knowledge and skills children learn must be co-ordinated and coherent. In order to achieve this in our curriculum, we have identified the key concepts or overarching ideas within each subject. To enable the children to access them, we call these the ‘Big Ideas’.
In computing these are:
Intent
At St Clement’s & St John’s Infant School, our vision is for every child to have confidence, compassion, creativity and curiosity in all areas of their learning, including Computing. We aim for all pupils to be confident users and controllers of I.T in our continuously developing technological society. To fulfil this need, we strive to provide pupils with a wide range of opportunities to develop and apply their Computing knowledge within a creative, confident and secure environment. We also aim to use Computing to support and enhance learning throughout the curriculum. We encourage the children to use what they have learned in class, both in school and in the outside world. We take Online Safety very seriously and children throughout the school are taught how to use technology appropriately.
We aim to fulfil the requirements of the National Curriculum for Computing; providing a broad and differentiated curriculum whilst ensuring the progressive development of computing concepts, knowledge and skills. We believe that our teaching should equip pupils to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world. 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 (The 2014 National Curriculum in England).
To support the teaching of Computing at St Clement’s & St John’s Infant School we use ‘Purple Mash’ for supporting schemes of work.
The aim of teaching Computing at our school is:
To develop pupils’ confidence in their knowledge and understanding of what algorithms are and how they are implemented as programs on digital devices and that programs execute by following precise and unambiguous instructions.
To develop a compassion and to be respectful and to use technology safely; to keep personal information private and to identify where to go for help and support when they have concerns about content or contact on the internet or other online technologies.
To inspire pupils’ curiosity to discover technologies for creating and debugging simple programs.
To allow all children to build on their computing knowledge and skills in creative ways such as through inspiring programmable devices, independent and collaborative learning opportunities, and collaborative internet safety days.
To develop our key driver of communication by embedding opportunities throughout our computing curriculum.
Implementation
At St Clement’s & St John’s Infant School, the Early Years Framework and the National Curriculum are at the core of our Computing curriculum.
Our curriculum is designed upon a base of skills and knowledge that we want the children to learn and is taught in a progressive manner throughout the whole school.
To ensure high standards of teaching and learning, teachers use the Purple Mash lessons plans from the scheme and the Computing progression document and deliver them through topics, which we select to excite and motivate our children.
Computer science units are taught discretely, to cover the complex skills and understanding of code. Information technology and Digital Literacy is taught when appropriate in learning topics to provide wider use and understanding of computing. Internet safety is taught regularly in class and whole school/national internet awareness days.
Impact
We aim for all children to achieve age related expectations in Computing at the end of KS1 and for all children to have a secure understanding of algorithms, digital coding and online safety.
The outcomes of the teaching of Computing across the school can be seen within the children’s online Purple Mash profile.
The assessment of Computing in KS1 is ongoing. The teachers regularly assess through sharing learning goals, formative feedback, peer discussions about what the children have learnt and whole class review of the learning. This information then informs the teachers with their planning, lesson activities and differentiation.
Purple Mash
Please click on the Purple Mash internal link page to support 'Home Learning' to access cross curricular learning links. There are a variety of learning games to support, English, Mathematics, Science and lots more.
Click on the Purple Mash link. This will take you to the school login page, please use the login card your teacher gave you at the start of the year.
Busythings
At St Clements, we support children to use and explore cross curricular Computing activities using software called 'Busythings'. All children have access during school time and also can enjoy using the site at home too to support there learning in school.
Please ask your teacher for access if you have mislaid your home access card.