Queen's Park CE/URC 
Computing
|
“For with God, everything is possible” (Matthew 19:26) Through our continued service to our community and rooted in our Christian Values, the opportunities we provide inspire our children and adults at our school to learn, to grow and to flourish. We are committed to developing our children into confident individuals who make a positive difference through developing a respect for themselves, each other and the world around them. For with God, everything is possible. (Matthew 19:26). Through our vision, we serve our community by providing an inclusive, happy, secure and caring Christian environment where all are valued and respected. We believe that God loves all his children unconditionally and values the uniqueness of the individual and recognise the diversity and range of contributions that each child can make. In our computing curriculum, we ensure that children fully understand the role and benefits that technology can have on our daily lives. We ensure our school vision drives our computing curriculum as we understand that this subject is pivotal for our children’s futures. When they master computing skills, ‘everything is possible’, as we are equipping them for careers in the future that haven’t been invented yet!
Our 5 Crown Principles drive our Computing Curriculum
Challenge Through the ‘challenge’ curriculum driver we want our children to relish challenges that being a computer scientist can bring: asking perceptive questions, thinking critically, weighing evidence, sifting arguments, and developing perspective and judgement. Our computing curriculum is to prepare our children for a rapidly changing world through the use of technology. Our high-quality computing curriculum is designed to enable them to use computational thinking and creativity to further understand the world. Resilience Through the ‘resilience’ curriculum driver, we promote optimism and determination in computing. Not only do we want our pupils to be digitally literate and competent end-users of technology, we also want them to develop creativity, resilience and problem-solving as well as critical thinking skills. A selection of carefully chosen challenges are embedded within our computing curriculum to promote resilience. Children are encouraged to be resilient and good at problem solving using key computational thinking skills such as abstraction, decomposition, generalisation and pattern spotting. Opportunities Through ‘opportunities’, we raise aspirations to broaden our children’s horizons – opening their eyes to the myriad careers they might pursue. We have carefully planned and incorporated visits from guest speakers within the local area who have careers in computer technology. Our children aspire to work towards careers in the field of computing. These tangible role models have the effect of raising the aspirations of our pupils to inspire them to work even harder to be the best that they can be. We want our pupils to have a clear understanding of the link between achieving well and having goals for the future. Wellbeing At Queen’s Park, we understand that happiness is linked to personal growth, health and development. We ensure our children are happy, healthy individuals. In computing, children can discuss and reflect upon the impact that computing has on their learning, development and their wellbeing. Pupils are able to find a balance between their online and offline life and understand why this balance is essential. Our computing curriculum inspires confident users of technology who are competent digital citizens of the future. With ‘wellbeing’ as a curriculum driver, we give children the confidence to thrive in a diverse, global society and be respectful citizens with British and Christian Values at the core. kNowledge Through the ‘kNowledge’ curriculum driver, we encourage our children to be resourceful learners. It is uniquely challenging and coherent to our children. The knowledge imparted in computing is crafted by our curriculum leader and computing subject leader to ensure that all pupils understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms and data representation can analyse problems in computational terms, and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems. All our teachers teach with the aim to ensure pupils have sufficient knowledge to progress through primary school and beyond.
Being a computer scientist means that children will have developed the knowledge, skills and understanding to help them access and use a range of technology in a safe and creative way. Children will have developed skills that equip them to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world. Our computing curriculum is enhanced by the use of carefully selected quality fiction and non-fiction texts which have been embedded in our guided reading lessons. |
.PNG)
|
Computing Long Term Plan Computing is taught three times throughout the year (with the exception of Year 6). |
.png)
|
Our progression documents have been created by the Curriculum Leader and Computing Subject Leader to ensure clear progress in the three strands of computing we focus on at Queen’s Park: Digital Literacy, Computational thinking and programming, Computers and Hardware and Data representation. The progression documents show key knowledge, key vocabulary and key skills and assessment outcomes from EYFS – Year 6 in programming, data and computer science. |
|
We are committed to equipping our children with the skills and knowledge they need to keep safe online. Queen’s Park Curriculum Coverage for DfE – Teaching Online Safety in School (Document released 2019) This document shows how our Computing Online Safety Curriculum and our PSHE Curriculum supports keeping our children safe online.
Vocabulary is V.I.T.A.L in Computing Valued We value vocabulary in computing and in everything we do. Identified Computing vocabulary is identified by the computing subject leader and is explicitly planned for. Taught Vocabulary is explicitly taught in every lesson. Our Crown Planners are used as a teaching tool for key computing vocabulary and the computing medium term plans include additional vocabulary to be taught. Applied Once vocabulary is taught, it is applied. Children apply their vocabulary in their speaking and listening, writing and assessment outcomes in computing. Learned Vocabulary is revisited and relearned. Vocabulary sticks in the children’s long-term memory. Lesson by lesson, year by year, children revisit and relearn key computing vocabulary.
Through an ‘explosion of experiences’, our youngest computer scientists are exposed to the foundations of their computing learning. Computing knowledge, skills and experiences are provided for through play-based, unplugged (no computer) activities that focus on building children’s listening skills, curiosity and creativity and problem solving. High quality, carefully selected books, stories and rhymes are the beating heart of our computing curriculum in EYFS. Computing vocabulary is planned for. Staff are role models in demonstrating computing vocabulary and this is further enhanced in our excellent provision. Children take part in a variety of tasks with digital devices, such as Bee Bots, tablets, laptop and the interactive whiteboard. This develops their understanding of a technologically diverse world and gains familiarity with the foundations of computing learning in EYFS which are linked to Year 1 and beyond. Year 1 to Year 6 Year on year, children will build upon their computing knowledge, skills and vocabulary. The curriculum leader and computing subject leader have created a meaningful, sequential learning journey through computing. Careful curriculum thinking and planning ensures that our children have the subject knowledge and components embedded in their long-term memories.
Pedagogy
Both our staff and children are enthusiastic about computing. Through ongoing CPD, we strive to ensure our teachers have expert knowledge of the computing they teach. Our pedagogy is firmly based upon our curriculum intent of embedding concepts into long-term memory so that they are able to be recalled, to ensure substantive and disciplinary knowledge and skills can be applied fluently. Our ‘Queen’s Park Quality First Teaching’ model ensures that lessons are effectively sequenced so that new knowledge and skills build on what has been taught before and towards defined end points. We firmly believe that all children should have full access, including those with additional needs, to our Computing curriculum therefore lessons are scaffolded where appropriate in order to meet the needs of all our children
The sequence of lessons across computing follows the same structure:
Each lesson, within the sequence, follows the structure so prior knowledge is constantly revisited and transferred to long term memory.
Our Crown Planners support our children with vocabulary and key knowledge for each unit of work. They enhance children’s understanding of key concepts, present information clearly and promote appropriate discussion. |
.png)
.png)
.png)
.png)
|
We understand that we may not see the true impact of our computing curriculum on our children as our computing curriculum is just the beginning of a lifetime of learning. Our well-constructed and well-taught computing curriculum leads to great outcomes. Our results are a reflection of what our children have learnt. At Queen’s Park, our philosophy is that broad and balanced leads to great outcomes and meeting end points at the end of each key stage. National assessments are useful indicators of the outcomes our children achieve. We ensure all groups of children are given the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life. We strive to ensure that our children are equipped with the skills (through a growth mindset approach) to fluently be able to retrieve key facts from their semantic memory. The quality of our children’s work, at every stage, is of a high standard. All learning is built towards an end point and at each stage of their education, we prepare our children for the next stage. We ensure all our children read to a stage appropriate level and fluency. Reading is the beating heart of our computing curriculum. Through disciplinary literacy in computing lessons, the impact of reading on the children’s computational learning is paramount. The impact of Queen’s Park computing curriculum is measured through the following:
|
.png)