Intent

At Glebelands we aim to instil children and parents a positive attitude and passion for computing. Create a safe learning environment in which children are free to take risks and make mistakes, understanding that these will help us to learn. Ensure all children can safely navigate the potential problems and hazards that they may encounter in the online world. Nurture resilience and inquisitiveness for all children to become creative problem solvers. Embed computing skills across the curriculum so pupils understand how to apply to real life contexts. Develop a consistent approach to computing teaching in order to close any gaps and to create responsible and sensible digital citizens. 

Implementation

The school uses the planning and lesson materials from the Teach Computing scheme. This is a research informed curriculum that is updated regularly and government backed.  

The Teach Computing Curriculum has been written to support all children. Each lesson is sequenced so that it builds on the learning from the previous lesson, and where appropriate, activities are scaffolded so that all children can succeed and thrive. Scaffolded activities provide children with extra resources, such as visual prompts, to reach the same learning goals as the rest of the class. Exploratory tasks foster a deeper understanding of a concept, encouraging children to apply their learning in different contexts and make connections with other learning experiences. As well as scaffolded activities, embedded within the lessons are a range of pedagogical strategies, which support making computing topics more accessible. 

The units for key stages 1 and 2 are based on a spiral curriculum. This means that each of the themes is revisited regularly (at least once in each year group), and children revisit each theme through a new unit that consolidates and builds on prior learning within that theme.  Not all of the objectives in the Education for a Connected World framework are covered in the Teach Computing Curriculum, as some are better suited to PSHE. 

Formative assessment - Every lesson includes formative assessment opportunities to ensure that misconceptions are recognised and addressed if they occur. They vary from teacher observation or questioning, to marked activities. At the end of every lesson, pupils are invited to assess against the success criteria how well they feel they have met the learning objective. 

Summative assessment - Pedagogically, when we assess, we want to ensure that we are assessing a child’s understanding of computing concepts and skills, as opposed to their reading and writing skills. Therefore, we encourage observational assessment while children are still developing their literacy skills. We believe that this is the most reliable way to capture an accurate picture of learning.  

This is delivered using a range of different hardware including laptops, iPads, LBQ tablets and Micro:bits. Alongside this we will use a wide variety of software and apps.  

Impact

Learning environments will reflect the attitudes we have towards computing as well as provide the resources children need to learn concepts. Children’s work will contain a range of activities to explore different concepts in carefully planned learning sequences. Children will be able to speak about their computing work passionately and articulately to demonstrate their level of understanding. Children will make connections between computing and other subjects or their own lives. They will be able to discuss how what they are learning may impact on their future careers. Children will be digitally literate’ and have a good understanding of how to be safe in the online world. They will know how to report any concerns that they may have. Children and parents will understand the importance of staying safe and responsible in the online world

Teach Computing Curriculum Journey