Computing at Plympton St Maurice Primary School
We are currently in an exciting stage of developing our computing curriculum at Plympton St Maurice Primary School and are looking at new ways to use and enhance computing in our school from September 2020.
Intent for Computing
We intend for our children to have all the relevant computing knowledge and skills they need to be successful, confident, and responsible citizens beyond their school life. Therefore, our computing curriculum meets the content requirements of the national curriculum but also allows our children to develop Life skills, Understanding, Nurture curiosity, Aspiration and Resilience.
By focusing on real life skills in computing, we are able to promote learning that develops children’s understanding of our ever-changing digital world. We provide our children with the opportunities to explore aspects of computing so they can question their discoveries and create solutions to problems, allowing them to be both resilient and aspirational.
Implementation for Computing
Our computing curriculum encompasses:
Social and emotional learning,
Talk,
Mastery Learning,
the Arts,
Understand Learning,
Resilience,
Independent Personal learning and thinking,
Collaborative Learning and
Experience rich curriculum.
Our computing curriculum is implemented by skilled teachers who deliver experience – rich computing lessons where children first explore a topic (such as coding), before they are given the knowledge behind it. This then allows our children to use computational thinking and creativity to be able to develop their skills and ultimately understand, and impact the world. The core of our computing curriculum is computer science, where children are taught the principles of information and computation; how digital systems work, and how to put this knowledge to use through programming. Building on this knowledge and understanding, children are equipped to use information technology to create programs, systems, and a range of creative content. Our computing curriculum also allows children to become digitally literate, so they are able to create work and express themselves and their ideas through information and communication technology. This includes creating word documents, PowerPoints, spreadsheets and databases; giving our children the knowledge and skills they need to access and utilise computing in further education and beyond.
Our computing curriculum allows opportunities to:
- Understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms, and data representation.
- Analyse problems in computational terms and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems.
- Evaluate and apply information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems.
- Be responsible, competent, confident, and creative users of information and communication technology.
Each class are timetabled a set amount of time to use the computing suite where every child has access to a computer for their computing lessons. We also use mini laptops, iPads and tablets in the classrooms to ensure computing is taught and used across the curriculum. To ensure the progression of skills and knowledge in computing, we use the Purple Mash Scheme which allows us to teach the computing curriculum through real life topics.
During each unit of work, children have opportunities to learn independently and collaboratively, in partners or small groups. They are provided with opportunities to explore a topic initially and then discuss what they have found. Through Mastery learning, we focus on the depth of computing knowledge rather than breadth and therefore our spiral curriculum in computing ensures skills are revisited and built upon over the years. The following units are taught across the school. Foundation focus on three units and then more units are introduced each year as well as revisiting previous units.
- Coding and Computational thinking
- Spreadsheets
- Internet and Email
- Art and Design
- Music
- Databases and Graphing
- Writing and Presenting
- Communication and Networks.
Impact for Computing
Through our implementation of the computing curriculum, we want our children to leave primary school with the knowledge and skills needed in computing at a level suitable to succeed in secondary school, a future workplace and as active participants in our digital world.
In order to ensure our children know what they are supposed to know, we review their saved work after each unit against the national curriculum objectives and assess whether their knowledge and skills are emerging, at the expected level or exceeding.
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