Rationale
At St Luke’s we want our students to value computers. We want them to grow up wanting to be game designers, app developers, computer game testers, data scientists, with no boundaries to their goals! The curriculum for computers has been thoughtfully developed to assist our students in improving their understanding of and proficiency with computers. We want every student to remember their time spent learning Computing in our school, to treasure these moments, and to seize each chance that comes their way.
Intent
The Computing curriculum at St. Luke’s is created to provide all students, including disadvantaged children and children with SEND, the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in a technologically advanced and ever-changing world. This is why it is crucial to start teaching computer skills at an early age. Using Purple Mash and following the National Curriculum we teach the core areas: Computing Science, Information technology, Digital literacy, and Online safety. Throughout a child’s education at St Luke’s, these strands are frequently covered through a variety of themes to make sure that the learning is retained and that the skills are properly developed.
Our goal is for Computing to promote children’s creativity and cross-curricular learning to engage children and enhance their educational experiences.
Implement
Purple Mash, an award-winning cross-curricular website for primary school students, is used to provide our computing curriculum and allows students to explore and advance their knowledge in a creative and imaginative manner. The teacher assigns children a “to do” each week that relates to the unit taught each half term. This enables children to progress and build on from their prior experiences, honing their knowledge, vocabulary, and abilities to become responsible, active users of the internet. This ensures that skills and information are built upon and sequenced correctly year after year to optimise learning for all students. E-safety lessons are completed every half-term and build on existing knowledge while also covering any current topics that may be significant. Children participate in the annual “Internet safety day” as well.
Within digital literacy, children gain practical skills in the safe use of ICT as well as an ability to use these skills in addition to addressing relevant, worthwhile issues, such as recognising the safe use of the internet, networks, and email. We teach children the essential ideas and concepts of computer science, such as logic, algorithms, and data representation, in computer science. We also teach a progression of Computing vocabulary to support children in their understanding. We provide pupils with access to a wide range of high-quality resources and cross-curricular opportunities to apply their Computing knowledge and abilities.
Children are taught how systems work, the principles of programming, exploring and writing algorithms. They are taught to use analytical and problem-solving skills to create and debug programmes.
We teach the National Curriculum, supported by a clear skills and knowledge progression, using Purple Mash to support this. This ensures that skills and knowledge are built on year by year and sequenced appropriately to maximise learning for all children.
Impact
We encourage students to think about, discuss, and appreciate how computers affect their lives, learning, growth, well-being, and future prospects. In computing, we look for evidence of the pupils’ knowledge by evaluating their work and digital skills, through Purple Mash, observing the learning and teaching and through pupil voice.
The pupils are evaluated to see if they are below, expecting, or exceeding the objectives set after each unit. Children’s work is saved on Purple Mash and may be forwarded to their class teacher or posted on the school display board. The subject leader or class teacher can then evaluate the students’ work from this location.
For Computing at St Luke’s, we use Purple Mash to deliver our Computing Curriculum.
Click the link below to view our Computing school blog page to see some examples of how our pupils flourish in Computing at St. Luke’s:
https://stlukesceprimary.blog-pages.co.uk/subject/computing/