Our Computing Vision Statement
Intent
At Christ Church we are very proud to say that our computing curriculum is rich and varied and very, very exciting! Computing is used across the curriculum to enhance teaching and learning. Every teacher has an interactive display and an iPad from which they are able to display children’s work whilst discussing how best to improve it. Every year group has their own laptops or iPads in school which ensures all children have equal access to technology. The children are encouraged to recognise when computing is an effective learning tool and can use a range of Apps to animate, edit pictures, bring photos to life and even to collate project work.
As part of their computing curriculum our children are encouraged to be creative and exploratory, using technology purposefully to make a range of digital content including: films, animations, digital books, posters, blogs, presentations and 3D models using a wide range of software and a variety of hardware including iPads, iMacs and Pcs. Our children are also taught how to organise, store and manipulate digital content that they create.
Our Curriculum
Implementation
Within our Computing Curriculum, there are three key areas:
- Computing Science- programming
- Information Technology- creating digital content and computer skills
- Digital Literacy- E-Safety and understanding computer systems.
Our computing teaching program enables teachers to deliver these three keys areas confidently, ensuring high-quality teaching and learning opportunities and differentiation where needed, which helps to ensure that learning is tailored and inclusive.
All year groups have discreet computing lessons where they learn to design, write and debug programs that accomplish specific goals. We believe that teaching our children to code helps them to develop their ability to think logically, predict and reason. As they progress through the school children will develop their programming skills learning to:
- control and simulate physical systems
- solve problems by decomposing them into smaller parts
- use sequence, selection and repetition in programs
- work with variables and various forms of input and output
- detect and correct errors in algorithms and programs
Progress of skills
Impact
Technology is very much a part of our every day lives and the internet offers us all amazing opportunities for communication and collaboration. At Christ Church C.E Junior School we teach our children to understand how internet services work and how to stay safe online and be a responsible and respectful digital citizen.
Christ Church recognises the importance of keeping children safe when using the internet and every year group focuses on this aspect of computing in Term 3 to coincide with internet safety week. Although, at Christ Church every computing lesson taught starts with a reminder of internet safety, we also have E-safety ambassadors from each class, who the children can report any concerns or worries they may have. These children have responsibility for promoting internet safety, which they do through awareness raising events such as poster competitions and podcasts. They meet regularly to check any concerns that have been logged by the peers and have trained support staff on hand to help them with advice for their classmates.