Mayfield Primary SchoolComputing
COMPUTING LEADER
Miss Haythornthwaite
'ALWAYS START WITH WHY'
COMPUTING INTENT FOR OUR PROGRAMME OF STUDY: KNOWLEDGE, PROGRESSION, COVERAGE
(PRIOR, NOW, NEXT)
Our core school intent runs through every aspect of our teaching and learning. It is our philosophy and approach in every subject area. It is how we teach and learn. Every leader commits to this. But every subject must have its own Programme of Study - its own lines of progression for the knowledge and skills we plan to teach and therefore its own rationale/intent for what we teach and learn. This is the rationale for this ‘prior, now and next’ in computing.
Using the National Curriculum, we have designed a Programme of Study in the following ways:
EYFS & YEAR 1
Early Years is about starting points and exploration. Once we have established the particular starting points of our children at baseline we take the most relevant statements from the areas of learning within the Early Years Framework and relate these to reasonable, carefully positioned introductions to ICT devices. This is largely skill and fine motor based within the context of finger manipulation skills on computing hardware and a range of software programmes. We continue this approach into year 1 as explorations expand further into text and multimedia, control programmes, sound, images and music and we begin to consider how we can stay safe when using ICT.
FROM YEAR 2
From this platform, we have planned for the children to move from knowledge and skill building through exploration and discovery into specific contexts with specific programmes and tools. Text and Multimedia builds into immediately creating work for specific theme driven purposes and then moves through Powerpoint, Word and Publisher to apply their knowledge and skills to the differing challenges of these programmes. Creating simple images, sounds and recording moves from simple creations and modifications into creating, making and using images, sound and music for theme based outcomes leading progressively towards a combination of these within the year 6 film-making work. Our control work is designed to start with simple devices and moves into fully controlling, sequencing, testing and evaluating - culminating in problem solving algorithms in year 5. (Our study of algorithms reaches its deliberate conclusion here as we plan to fulfill this area of learning by this stage in Upper Key Stage 2 as we move into other aspects). Handling data moves from simply collecting and storing data into developing the children's work with databases and spreadsheets in a range of progressively challenging contexts through Key Stage 2.
ONLINE SAFETY & SAFE RESEARCH
We have designed a two part process to this study. Firstly, we have identified specific areas of computing study within our thematic work across each year group that allows for the teaching and practice of safe research. Whilst we have established a specific Online Safety Programme of Study for our new PSHE/RSE curriculum to allow for explicit teaching of specific themes each half-term for each year group. Thereby running the key messages alongside real life application. (You can see a copy of this overview below.)
Take a look at the Coverage Overview below and our Programme of Study: Progression & Milestones document. Download them at the base of the page and then take a look at the 'Implement & Impact' section of the website to see how we bring this to life with the help of our ‘how’ Classroom Craft philosophy.
COMPUTING IMPLEMENTATION & MONITORING: SO MY LATEST WORK IS.....
* ensuring that the computing curriculum delivers a broad range of knowledge across each of the aspects on our 'Progression & Milestones Document';
* ensuring our online safety planning from our PSHE/RSE curriculum is fully deployed and implemented;
* working with colleagues to enhance the knowledge, range of ideas and potential within the electronic communication, sound and music aspects.
As Computing Leader, it has been a hectic time as we implement and measure the continued impact of our new curriculum, yet I am also Remote Learning Leader and clearly the emergence of this over the last five terms has meant a whole new area of work to implement, manage and monitor. I am currently monitoring the latest updates to the termly thematic planning to ensure coverage remains as planned and identifying specific colleagues for subject knowledge work in order to expand their range of potential teaching ideas in a very technical and specific area. The headteacher likes his subject leaders to identify where professional development is needed and then use leadership time to impact upon this. Exciting times as we continually try to build and improve.