Our School Vision

Our school is a community where each person is valued as a child of God. We are a Church of England school, inspired and guided by the life and teaching of Jesus. We work together to create a caring, friendly and safe school family, to enable the whole school community to flourish and each person reach their full God-given potential.

This document is devised to support this vision, and has the following intentions:

· Pupils are empowered to develop the hope and perseverance necessary to engage the challenges of maths in the context of school and the wider world.

· Teaching staff seek out every opportunity to ensure that all pupils flourish in maths lessons, developing wisdom and creativity through an ambitious and broad curriculum that challenges expectations, deepens knowledge and develops skills.

· Computing lessons are inclusive, so everyone is valued and respected – and tolerance and diversity are celebrated.

Intent

At Donnington Wood CE Junior School, we aim to ensure that our pupils flourish and become confident and efficient in computational thinking and creativity to understand and change the world. We aim to promote a love of computing, which encourages pupils to explore different concepts and feel confident being stretched in their computational thinking. We have adopted the ‘Teachcomputing.org’ approach to the teaching of computing across school. This aims to deliver the objectives of the National Curriculum and allows children the opportunity to embed their computational knowledge through a balance of understanding and applying the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science; analysing problems in computational terms; having repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems; evaluating and applying information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems; being responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology.

Our Computing curriculum is focused upon the following beliefs:

· Children will take an active part in computing lessons.

· Children will enjoy exploring computational concepts.

· Children will develop a deeper understanding of the computing curriculum.

· Children will understand the relevance of computing in the real world.

Implementation

Our scheme of work for Computing is adapted from the ‘Teach Computing’ Curriculum and covers all aspects of the National Curriculum. This scheme was chosen as it has been created by subject experts and based on the latest pedagogical research. It provides an innovative progression framework where

computing content (concepts, knowledge, skills and objectives) has been organised into interconnected networks called learning graphs.

The curriculum aims to equip young people with the knowledge, skills and understanding they need to thrive in the digital world of today and the future. The curriculum can be broken down into 3 strands: computer science, information technology and digital literacy, with the aims of the curriculum reflecting this distinction.

The national curriculum for computing aims to ensure all pupils:

· can understand and apply the fundamental principles and concepts of computer science, including abstraction, logic, algorithms and data representation (Computer science)

· can analyse problems in computational terms, and have repeated practical experience of writing computer programs in order to solve such problems (Computer science)

· can evaluate and apply information technology, including new or unfamiliar technologies, analytically to solve problems (Information technology)

· are responsible, competent, confident and creative users of information and communication technology. (Digital literacy)

In addition to the scheme, Donnington Wood Junior School, subscribe to Scratch, Seesaw, Microsoft Office and various other providers, providing all children with access to a wide range of platforms through their secure school (name.lastname@taw.org.uk ) accounts. Block coding lessons provide a graphical approach to coding where pupils drag and drop events, objects and actions to make things happen in a program, progressing to building their own games on Scratch.

Impact

By the end of Key Stage 2, we aspire that our Computing curriculum will have had the following impact on pupils:

· Children will enjoy computing and are increasingly confident in themselves in the use of technology.

· Children can talk enthusiastically about their learning and who are eager to further their progress in computing.

· Pupils will become fluent, competent, and efficient in their use of computing.

We encourage our children to enjoy and value the curriculum we deliver. We will constantly ask the WHY behind their learning and not just the HOW. We want learners to discuss, reflect and appreciate the impact computing has on their learning, development and well-being.

Finding the right balance with technology is key to an effective education and a healthy lifestyle. We feel the way we implement computing helps children realise the need for the right balance and one they can continue to build on in their next stage of education and beyond. We encourage regular discussions between staff and pupils to best embed and understand this.

The way pupils showcase, share, celebrate and publish their work will best show the impact of our curriculum. We also look for evidence through reviewing pupil’s knowledge and skills digitally through tools like Seesaw, books and observing learning regularly.

Progress of our computing curriculum is demonstrated through outcomes and the record of coverage in the process of achieving these outcomes.