Intent
At Our Lady and St. Anne’s, we aim to prepare our learners for the ever-changing digital world by giving them skills, knowledge and opportunities to develop their understanding in Computing. Our curriculum focuses on progression of skills, each year building upon the last in digital literacy, computer science, information technology and online safety to ensure that children become competent and skilled users of technology. Our children will be taught to use technology responsibly and carefully, being mindful of how their behaviour, words and actions can affect others. We understand that the best prevention of issues that we currently see is through education, so our teaching will be relevant, using our links with experts in Computing and the Police. We wish to embed computing across the whole curriculum to make learning creative and accessible. By the end of UKS2, we want our children to be able to have the confidence to choose the best tool to fulfil a task set by teachers.
Implementation
At Our Lady and St. Anne’s, computing is taught in discrete computing lessons, along with some online safety sessions through out PSHE curriculum. The curriculum is delivered by a nationally recognised scheme of work created by Teach Computing. The scheme has been closely linked to the 2014 National curriculum - each year group on the previous year and ensures progression and coverage of curriculum. By teaching specific computing lessons, children can learn skills in greater depth and then use these skills to make meaningful links to the wider curriculum. In computer science, children will use Code.org to develop their programming skills and then transfer this to real life scenarios using BBC micro:bits. In Online Safety, we follow a bespoke curriculum plan which builds across the school to ensure relevant information is given at the appropriate age. In Y4 upwards, children will receive teaching from the Cyber security education team in Northumbria Police to give children an understanding of deeper issues relating to safety online.
Impact
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 to understand how to use technology safely and creatively, but also the confidence to understand new technologies using the skills they have developed throughout their time at Our Lady and St. Anne’s.
