St Clement's Catholic Primary School

Through our computing curriculum, we want to prepare our children to use computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world. We want our children to have many opportunities to use computing in meaningful contexts derived from other subject areas. Computing is an integral part of everyday life with technology constantly growing and adapting. We want to develop our children’s cultural capital through giving them the skills and essential knowledge as they progress throughout their school journey.

Children will learn the key knowledge as set out in the national curriculum within the three strands of computing. This will help them develop a robust understanding of Computer Science, Digital Literacy and Information Technology. Children will have the opportunity to enhance and broaden their online education. This will ultimately support the skills needed for lifelong learning. Teach Computing offers the children a broad and balanced curriculum with projects that will ensure children have been taught all the content by the end of their key stage. The units for key stages 1 and 2 are based on a spiral curriculum. This means that each of the themes are revisited regularly (at least once in each year group), and pupils revisit each theme through a new unit that consolidates and builds on prior learning within that theme. This means that children will be able to make links and retrieve knowledge and skills between Computer Science, Digital Literacy and Information Technology as they go through school. Children will revisit computational skills across a key stage in a progressive way. This will ensure that the knowledge and skills are embedded and provide a clear sense of progression. The Teach Computing Curriculum acknowledges that physical computing plays an important role in modern pedagogical approaches in computing, both as a tool to engage pupils and as a strategy to develop pupils’ understanding in more creative ways. Additionally, physical computing supports and engages a diverse range of pupils in tangible and challenging tasks.

The vocabulary provided for computing shows the words the children are likely to already have prior knowledge of and therefore can be built on in subsequent lessons and applied in new contexts both in the curriculum and in the wider world. Children will not only understand the subject better but also the skills to read widely, develop their own knowledge and world views and be able to express themselves more clearly through the written word.

Children will study the strands of Computing throughout the year in a blocked focus. Online Safety will not be taught as a stand-alone lesson but will be entwined into these projects to ensure children understand this in the context of the strands they are studying. In EYFS, children will learn and develop basic skills whilst using technology. This prior knowledge will be built on in KS1 as children will expand their skills through algorithms, common uses of IT and the organisation of technology. Each year group in KS2 will also use these projects to allow a deeper understanding of the three strands to develop.  The projects for lower KS2 will focus more on components and structures as children will begin to be able to discuss and reason their thoughts. Children will also enhance their skills by focusing on recognising behaviours through simple explanations. Upper KS2 will then use this understanding to bring together the computing curriculum, with more of a focus on their independence. Throughout KS2, children will use search technologies effectively through class discussions.