COMPUTING
INTENT
At Haslington Primary Academy and Nursery, we strive to ensure children are prepared for the future in this ever-growing digital age. With the use of technology becoming more and more popular, we want to develop and equip children in becoming computational thinkers, digital literate, and resilient and responsible, when using and understanding technology.
The computing curriculum focusses on three distinct areas; computer science, information technology, and digital literacy. The core of computing is computer science, where pupils are taught the principles of information and computation, how digital systems work, and how to put this knowledge to use through programming.
The national curriculum for computing aims to ensure that all pupils:
- Can understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms and data representation
- Can analyse problems in computational terms, and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems
- Can evaluate and apply information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems
- Are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology.
IMPLEMENTATION
To ensure all children cover all areas of the computing curriculum, we use a progression of skills document, to ensure a high-quality computing curriculum is taught throughout the school (years 1 – 6). As a school, we ensure that computing is embedded into our curriculum, through our topic, with many cross-curricular links. Following this, the teachers in each class use the progression of skills to inform their planning. They complete half termly/termly topic overviews, outlining the computing they will be covering during that topic. Please see the topic overviews on the classes’ individual class pages.
To support with our teaching, the school has purchased Purple Mash. Purple Mash helps to embed computing and digital skills across the whole curriculum, and gives free home access to seamlessly integrate learning at school and home. All programs and schemes of work we use in Haslington Primary Academy and Nursery are in line with the National Curriculum.
IMPACT
Throughout the year, our curriculum lead will monitor the planning, teaching, and assessing of computing through termly lesson observations, termly pupil voices, checking assessments against documents given to staff (progression of skills).
As a school, we also meet with computing subject leads from cluster schools and local high schools, to ensure that our expectations are similar, as well as our assessments.
SAFEGUARDING
At Haslington Academy and Nursery, we are committed to safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children and young people and expect all staff and volunteers to share this commitment.
Policies are available to all staff, and volunteers, and must be followed.
All children sign our acceptable use agreements, outlining rules for using technology within the school, so that we ensure children are being safe, responsible, and respectful.
Each class teaches 6 lessons of online safety, and the school also partakes in digital safety week, and anti-bullying week, so that we are always highlighting the importance of being safe, and responsible when using technology.